Ex-cadet says DPP leadership ‘nauseating’: Joins Aford as youth leader

Alliance for Democracy (Aford) national youth director Big Joe Nyirongo has said he regrets ever belonging to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) saying the party’s leadership is “nauseating” and “retrogressive.”

He told Nyasa Times in an interview on Friday that DPP had frustrated its youth in the northern region and thus should “forget of ever get a parliamentary or ward councilor position” from now on.

Nyirongo, who brands himself as a former DPP senior youth cadet, is one of the 31 northern region DPP cadets that were dismissed from the party for “indiscipline” – following a clash with party leadership christened “insubordination” – by DPP’s secretary general Ecklen Kudontoni.

But Nyirongo branded their dismissal as “unfortunate” and “not procedural.”

Said Nyirongo: “As youths we simply wanted to meet with our leader [Lewis Ngalande] but they: Ken Sanga [regional governor] and Jappie Mhango [director of campaign] refused us to. Why didn’t they want us to meet our own leader? They have the answers.”

He added: “When they came back last Friday, we thought they had come for some consultative meeting. But to our surprise the message that we heard was that we had been dismissed from the party.”

Nyirongo said it was “all water under the bridge. I now belong to AFORD, and I’m happily home.”

He said the party was the only one that could offer “hope” to the people of the north, arguing the “northern region has lacked a voice for a long time.”

“As national committee that is what we’re planning at Aford,” said Nyirongo, “to win all the 36 seats present in the northern region. Once we do that, even if we don’t make it into government, we will have a voice that will be able to be listened to by any government like it was before.”

Aford, founded by trade unionist and political tsar Chakufwa Chihana, is regarded highly as far as multiparty democracy is concerned in Malawi. It won all the 36 parliamentary in the northern region in 1994 when the country held her first democratic elections.

Chakufwa died in 2006 and since his death the party has continued smoldering to death. In the last elections, the party was in an alliance with former President Joyce Banda’s People’s Party (PP), but PP lost miserably – only trailing third after DPP and main opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP).

Aford now has one MP, its president and son of Chakufwa, Enoch Chinana.