DPP governor accused of creating parallel structures

Accusations have emerged towards ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Eastern Region Governor Julius Paipi by some of the party’s followers and members of Parliament  (MPs) from the region for working against the party.

Among others, Paipi is being accused of sidelining the DPP MPs and the party’s regional structure when holding political rallies in their respective constituencies where he is also alleged to be planting aspirant Parliamentarians to antagonize the seating MPs.

This, however,  has raised serious concerns for popularity of the party considering the claimed strides which Muhammed Sadik Mia and the main opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP)  is making in the region.

As a party, DPP is said to have agreed that there would be no shadow MPs in areas where the party has a sitting MP. Shadow MPs are only allowed in areas where the party has no Members of Parliament.

In the North and center DPP has held regional meetings with sitting MPs and aspirants from areas where the party is not represented. This, the party say is aimed at strengthening the already existing structures.

But in the Eastern region meeting which is scheduled for Saturday next week, Paipi has invited both sitting and aspirants MPs from constituencies which are already represented by the party, something which has irked the MPs.

“Since his appointment as RG [regional governor] he has been working against the policies of the party. He has created amenity with sitting MPs because he wants to field his own preferred candidates in constituencies. This is not on because as MPs we have people that follow us. It is very unfortunate that the party’s leadership is not reacting to this development which can make the party to perform poorly during the forthcoming elections,” said a an MP from Ntcheu who did not want to be mentioned.

Among other things, the MPs we talked to blames their RG for not respecting the party structures in favor of using people who have not positions into the party.

“As MPs we have agreed that we should seat back and leave him to work. A single person cannot cultivate votes for the president. We live in our constituencies and we know how MCP [Malawi Congress Party] is working. This scares a lot,” says another MP.

Efforts to talk to Paipi proved futile as all his mobile phone numbers could not be reached when we tried them several times.