CMD tells tiny parties to deregister as Tikonze coalition kicks off

Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD) has told the six tiny political parties that has grouped together to form an electoral alliance ahead of the May 21  2019 elections to deregister their former parties in order to be in conformity with the new Political Parties Act.

KizitoTenthani, the executive director of CMD said the political party leaders have to clearly show that they have deregistered their previous tiny parties.

“The new law outlaws one person from holding membership to more than one party. They have to deregister their previous parties if they are to be registered as a new political party,” said Tenthani.

Leader of the six parties, CassimChilumpha of the ADD said the new party will respect the new law.

“We will definitely deregister the old parties,” said Chilumpha without giving exact date when the deregistration would be done.

Six tiny parties have on Thursday sealed an electoral alliance ahead of the highly contentious May 21, 2019 tripartite elections.

Some of the parties that are now under Tikonze Peoples Movement (TPM) are Mafunde, Peoples Progressive Movement (PPM) and ADD.

Chilumpha says the political grouping will field one presidential candidate as well as one parliamentary candidate in each constituency and one local government candidate in each area.

“We will have one party colours and we will work as one party,” said Chilumpha.

Initially, there were supposed to be 13 parties in the alliance but others, including United Transformation Movement (UTM) and People’s Party (PP) pulled out and said they would contest in the elections alone.

UTM’s SaulosChilima is one of the leading presidential candidates and is likely to face president Peter Mutharika of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Lazarus Chakwera’s Malawi Congress Party (MCP).