Mutharika mad with PAC over ‘resignation’ call: Malawi President feels ‘ambushed’ with the recommendation in report

Malawi President Peter Mutharika on Thursday angrily accused quasi religious body, Public Affairs Committee (PAC) of ambushing him, saying the officials withdrew the original recommendations just to give him a set of new ones thirty minutes before the meeting which include  demands that Mutharika should resign within 90 days if it fails to solve the social and economic problems currently besetting the country.

In a PAC report directly addressing President Mutharika titled: ‘Defining solutions to economic and political direction of Malawi’,  the group has inserted the call for among the political governance recommendations of the conference.

“Government should resign in 30 or 90 days as it has admitted that it has failed Malawians and does not know what to do,” reads part of the report.

Mutharika, sounding angry, described this as unfair.

It later transpired that PAC officials hurriedly inserted a recommendation by main opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and its parliamentary bedfellow, the Peoples Party (PP) to have Mutharika step down because his administration had completely failed to deal with the current economic and persistent food shortages.

However, during the frank face to face talk beamed live on state controlled Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), PAC chairman Felix Chingota did not bring out the issue.

But PAC has argued that both the recommendations and actionable plans are views of the public.

“As a country let us not continue to wait till the system collapses politically and economically then we start acting on these observations. Let us act now in order to prevent violent conflict in our country,” reads part of the report.

PAC reports to the President that Malawians are struggling in villages and poverty has become “a permanent friend to them.”

Mutharika, responding indirectly to the issue, said the economic and food shortages were not man made, saying God and nature are partly to blame.

He said the El Nino powered drought and floods have devastated the country and there was nothing his government would have done to fight El Nino.

Malawi Congress Party  (MCP) presient Lazarus Chakwera said at an earlier news conference that Mutharika should not blame God or nature for the economic mess and persistent food shortages, saying the government economic and agricultural policies were upside down.

Chakwera blamed the Mutharika administration for refusing to take advice from the opposition on sound economic and agricultural policies.

The PAC  report also includes a proposal for introduction of rotational presidency to give each region a fair chance of the presidency, the turning of Zomba State House and Mudi in Lilongwe into health facilities to cut on unnecessary State House expenditures while expanding healthcare.