Mutharika says will definitely seek another term at 81 years

President Peter Mutharika has maintained that  he will definitely  run for a second and his last term in office during the 2019 tripartite elections.

The 79- year-old President,  who will be 81 years old in 2019, last week  told a rally in the northern region that he is still young .

Some quarters say Mutharika is past his prime time as a politician though Malawi’s constitution does not bar anyone from contesting as president on the basis of age.

But the President has stressed that that he will not be wished away, pledging to keep leading  the nation to “prosperity.”

In his address  at Raiply in Mzimba when he officially inaugurated Export Processing Zone factory, a subsidiary of Raiply Malawi Limited, Mutharika said he is  bringing a lot of development to the North and would do better in second term.

”We have the Mzuzu–Nkhata Bay Road, which assessors say is the best road in Malawi. We are also completing the Jenda– Edingeni Road that will connect to Zambia border. We have plans to construct the road that will connect Chikangawa to Nkhata Bay. This will be done during the second term of my administration,” Mutharika said.

He also hailed progress on the Njakwa-Livingstonia and Karonga-Songwe roads.

“But this was my first term and I will continue my work in my second term. In three years, I have managed to construct 10 major roads across the country as opposed to others who built a single road in 31 years,” Mutharika reiterated

He stressed he is going to be seeking another mandate in 2019.

Mutharika had a few official engagements in the northern region which included officially opening a K9 billion Export Processing Zone (EPZ) factory at Raiply Malawi Limited in Mzimba District.

Mutharika speaking at Kasungu Boma, on his way from the north, said the country is paying dearly for little investment made in the energy sector in so many years.

“Electricity is a big problem because the nation failed to make long term investments I the past 50 years. We only invested for an electricity generation capacity of 20 megawatts which was not enough,” Mutharika said.

The president then laid bare plans to arrest the perennial power outages saying that by Christmas, there will be an additional 75 megawatts through generators to add to the current 147 megawatts the country is generating.

He further said that by 2019, the country will have an added 305 megawatts through interventions like maintenance of existing power generating plants and construction of new ones.

Indicating some key achievements by his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led administration , Mutharika said it must be appreciated that over the past three years, inflation has fallen from 24 percent to 8.4 percent, as of September 2017, that interest rates have dramatically fallen, with the base lending rate down to 18 percent by July, 2017.

Mutharika dispelled some comments that go around that he always favours the southern region in terms of development projects.

“As Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) led government, our development favours no particular region. We take development everywhere, be it the north, centre or south,” the President said

If elected in 2019 , Mutharika will be  ending his second five-year term as president in 2024.