Lawyer Theu raps ‘dishonest’ Namarika at the helm of Malawi Covid-19  response  

Private practice lawyer, Bright Theu, has questioned government’s decision to put Principal Secretary (PS) for the Ministry of Health and Population, Dr. Dan Namarika, in the lead in the fight against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

In his post on the social media, Theu challenges that government cannot successfully convince Malawians on COVID-19 pandemci with Namarika at the helm, arguing the PS is not someone people can trust because of the way he handled the illness and death of former President Bingu wa Mutharika.

Namarika was a personal physician of Bingu at the time of his sudden death to cardiac arrest in 2012.

“COVID-19 is surely real and spreading, perhaps mostly unnoticed and untraceably. Government’s failure to convince its own people has everything to do with using known dishonest people to supply information to the public. The Dr. Namarika is in official records to have lied about the death of President Bingu wa Mutharika and probably sanctioned change of name of the dead patien  president to Daniel Phiri,” writes the lawyer.

“Granted, honesty is not a value and virtue in DPP government. From the very top dishonesty is. But trust you me, your gang is the only one conviced with that position. The majority of the nation who can only operate with trust still values honesty and abhor dishonesty. You cannot deploy folks known to be that dishonest to convey truth. You soil the truth before it gets to the audience,” adds Theu.

And in his comment on social media, Ras Sam Mogha wonders how could trust Namarika with such a responsibility.

“Is this the same Namarika who told the nation that Bingu was alive? Here he comes again with a cooked up story of six more patients,” writes Mogha.

Namarika had not yet responded to a questionnaire from Nyasa Times seeking his comment on the matter at the time of going with story online.