Malawi not a boys’ quarters for somebody who thinks can dictate everyone – Mtambo

Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) chairperson,Timothy Mtambo, has said the organisation is  not relenting on its  plans to hold mass protest starting with Wednesday demonstrations countrywide.

“All Malawians who are mounring should come out everywhere to hold demonstrations,” said Mtambo at a news conference in Lilongwe on Monday.

“Malawi is not a boys’ quarters for somebody who thinks can dictate everyone,” he added.

The demonostrations are pushing for the resignation of the chair of Malawi Electoral Commission, Jane Ansah. over the alleged mismanagement of the May election, which saw President Peter Mutharika re-elected.

Ansah, a judge of the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal, has dismissed calls for her to resign, saying she would only step down if the court hearing an elections petition case found her leadership to have failed to discharge its duties.

The grouping, backed by the opposition, said they expect the demonstrations to continue until Ansah go.

Mtambo also said he is living dangerously as  regime thugs  have been following him and his vice, Gift Trapence, in a vehicle he has identified as a prado.

He also said HRDC will do what it can to lift the injunction obtained by Malawi Revenue Authority, National Oil Company of Malawi and Airport Development Limited stopping HRDC from holding the planned demonstrations away from the three organisations’ actual premises in airports and ports of entry.

“What is so painful is that people are using our own taxes to pay lawyers and work on injunctions at the court. You can not say let us discuss yet another branch of the government is going to court,” Mtambo said.

On his part, Trapence, said  apart from the demonstrations, HRDC will be holding anti-Jane Ansah rallies in all the countries cities until the Malawi Election Commission chairperson resigns.

“We will not back down,” Trapence stressed.

Speaking at a citizen rally in Karonga District on Saturday, HRDC leaders said they had reached a point of no return and would not relent until demands of the people, which include forcing Ansah to step down, were met.

Since May 27 this year when the MEC chairperson Ansah declared Mutharika of the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) winner of the presidential race in the May 21 Tripartite Elections, HRDC has been organising demonstrating demanding that Ansah resign for presiding over allegedly fraudulent elections.