Malawi to register 34th political party, ANP
With about 30 months to go before Malawi conducts a supposedly tripartite elections, a new political party is about to be born.
With a population of just above 14 million, Malawi whose political landscape is still in its infancy stage already has 33 political parties, majority of them briefcase parties.
To be known as the African Nyasaland Party (ANP), the party interim leadership claims its mission is to bring change in the lives of Malawians through peace and freedom.
Interim President Lawrent Sichinga said having analysed the country’s political landscape he has decided to form a political group that will respond to citizen’s wishes.
New Era
Sichinga said the formation of his new party is the beginning of a new era in the country’s political set up which for some time has had no level playing field.
He said having lived in the diaspora for over two decades he brings back home ideologies that will uproot all social evils and liberate Malawians to the economic hardships they are facing.
“The party will bring solution to the current problems Malawians are facing in their day to day life,” said Sichinga who said has lived in South Africa for 21 years and walks with a flywhisk imitating Malawi’s former president Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda who died in 1997.
The new politician says his joining the political elite is in response to President Bingu wa Mutharika’s administration call to not just keep on accusing government in everything instead of offering solutions.
Under the slogan “Time for change”, Sichinga said time has come for the country to bring a practical, inevitable and meaningful transformation in terms of social, political and economic development.
“The ANP has come to offer the solutions to government on the many challenges being faced,” he said without elaborating on the solutions his party will give.
Of the 33 existing political parties, the ANP becomes the second party to use the word Nyasaland on its name.
The first was Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) founded in 1944 by among others James Fredrick Sangala and Levi Zililo Mumba which later transformed to become the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and ruled the country for 31 years under the dictatorship of Dr Kamuzu Banda.
Among the 33 political parties in the country, very few like MCP, United Democratic Party (UDF), the newly registered Peoples Party (PP) of Vice President Joyce Banda and perhaps the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are viewed to have grassroots structures while the rest are normally referred to as briefcase parties.
Towards the 2009 presidential and parliamentary elections, James Nyondo brought political excitement when, from nowhere, he announced that he was standing as an independent presidential candidate. He fared badly.
He later founded and registered (early last year) his National Salvation Front (NASAF) party but since then he has gone into oblivion.
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