Henry Mussa ‘recuses’ himself from DPP appointed position

Opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) veteran politician Henry ‘Mtengowaminga’ Mussa has opted not to take  the position of deputy publicity secretary of the party citing a number of reasons.

In a letter Nyasa Times has seen dated 29 August, 2020 and addressed to the party’s secretary general and copied to the party president Peter Mutharika, Mussa says “it is with considerable regret and emotional pain that I would like to recuse myself for taking up the offered position for now”.

“I have struggled a lot to reach this decision but I have ultimately resolved that given the circumstances and in conformity with both my personal and political principles, recusing myself from taking up the said position remains the best option.

“For the sake of removing any potential doubt, I would like to emphasize that I have not in any way rejected the position but rather recused myself from taking it up,” reads the letter in part.

Mussa says the office of the party spokesperson issued a communique emanating from the Central Executive Committee meeting as held separately on the 4th and 27th August 2020 in Mangochi in which it communicated a number of resolutions including interim appointments where he was offered appointment to the position of deputy spokesperson of the party.

He expressed his “very profound gratitude”  to Mutharika and the entire Central Executive Committee for entrusting him with the said position, “which goes a long way in demonstrating the unconditional trust the party has in both my political and experiential capabilities to assist in steering the agenda of the party as we together strive to re-organize and strengthen our party in readiness for our comeback in 2024 as well as in sustaining DPP’s unparalled legacy as formidably built and later successfully extended and solidified by His Excellency Professor Bingu Wa Mutharika (may his gracious soul continue resting in eternal peace) and Professor Peter Mutharika, our current leader, respectively. I honestly felt and continues to feel very humbled by such a recognition.”

However, Mussa contends that both the position of party spokesperson (main and deputy) were contested for at the party’s national convention and that Nicholas Dausi emerged “constitutionally legitimate and mandated holder of the position and until the Central Executive Committee meeting, which resolved to appoint me to the said position in deputy capacity.”

He argued: “There has never been any official communication that the incumbent holder of the position has either quit the position on his own volition for personal or political reasons or been suspended and even removed for breach of party code of conduct as enshrined in party constitution.

“I therefore developed this apprehension that in taking up the position I might be risking  complicity in breaching DPP constitution, something I would strongly refrain from doing having been party to formation of DPP and therefore obliged to be exemplary in upholding and protecting its constitution unconditionally.”

Mussa also contends that as someone who has held a number of senior elected positions in the party including that of Treasurer General, he finds himself “in such an awkwardly impossible position to take up a position I thought was still in principle being  held by another senior colleague in the party with whom I have worked closely since the inception of our beautiful Blue Movement and Family without creating fertile ground for political conspiracy theories that I have been part of a coup detat to remove my senior colleague from the position so that I should be party to taking it up”.

“This perception would be very much buoyed by the reality that I have not been holding any substantive position in the party since the last elective convention though I have been playing active voluntary political role as part of the DPP rearguard. I have therefore also been psychologically emboldened by this political dilemma to recuse myself from taking up the position,” says Mussa.

Newly-appointed spokesperson Brown Mpinganjira said Mussa has the right to accept or reject the position “but the party will have to move on with or without him”.