I’m ready to die for Malawi- Joyce Banda
Malawi Vice-President Joyce Banda says she is ready to be arrested or even being a martyr for defending the constitution and the citizens.
Banda has been subject of speculations that government is plotting to arrest her on trumped up charges of treason and possibly cause her early death. She already escaped on mysterious accident.
She told a local radio that she got wind of the arrest plot while in Zambia during her private visit at the invitation of President Micheal Chilufya Sata last week.
“I also came across such speculation but I was never intimidated by them,” Banda said in remarks monitored on Daybreak Malawi programme on Capital FM on Monday.
The first Malawi female vice president and recently ranked third powerful woman in Africa by Forbes Magazine, e said she is not a coward who can be scared of arrest or murder threats.
“I have lived with such threats for the better part of life and I cannot be moved by an inch now,” she said.
Banda stressed: “I am more than ready to die for this country if that is the price I have to pay for being honest with my government.”
President Bingu wa Mutharika is on record threatening to arrest and even “smoke out” Banda accusing her and the civil society activists of plotting to overthrow his government through nationwide demonstrations on July 20.
Banda challenged Mutharika to go ahead and arrest her.
“I am ready to be crashed, to be smoked out, if that is as a result of my sharing the pain of the poor,” Banda challenged.
She however dismissed the accusations by Mutharika saying she wasn’t in the organising committee of the demonstrations and never attended at the marches despite sympathising with Malawians for the economic pain they are going through now.
Banda and Mutharika fell out over plans by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to field president’s brother, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mutharika as presidential candidate in 2014.
She was expelled in the ruling party last December and founded her own Peoples Party (PP).
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