OPC orders K2 million donations from Parastatals to DPP: For presidential nomination logistics

The Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) has ordered all parastatal organizations in the country to contribute K2 million each to be used for the presentation of nomination papers for President Peter Mutharika at Comesa Hall in Blantyre on Friday.

Nyasa Times can reveal that the verbal instructions are being coordinated by an official at OPC Prince Mtelera to various Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Finance Officers for the parastatal  organizations.

“They said we should make the K2 million available today for the nomination ceremony for the President tomorrow,” said one of the CEOs in an interview with Nyasa Times.

Insiders said DPP Regiona Governor for the South Charles Mchacha who is also deputy minister of Homeland security has been assigned to collect the money from the parastatals based in Blantyre.

For parastatal organizations based in the Central Region, Mtelera has instructed them to give the money to Uladi Mussa who is the DPP Vice President for the centre and those in the north will have to give the money to Kenneth Sanga the regional governor for the north.

“They have told us to make sure that the money is available whether we take the money out as fuel expenses or any other way, we should just make sure that the money should be available today, ” said another source from a Lilongwe based parastatal and corroborated the story.

There are almost 60 parastatal companies in the country and if each give the requested K2 million it will mean APM will use K120 million of taxpayers money for his ceremony of presenting nomination papers.

Just last week, OPC also issued another verbal instruction to all the parastatal organizations to give the DPP K15 million each for campaign.

The ruling DPP is expected to raise a whopping K900 million from taxpayers for its campaign.

The development comes at the time the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal has dismissed an application by DPP and four State corporations to set aside a High Court judgement in the Blue Night case against some civil society organisations (CSOs).

The State institutions are Lilongwe Water Board (LWB), Lilongwe City Council (LCC), Blantyre City Council (BCC) and Mzuzu City Council (MCC). The financially-struggling MCC had earlier signed a consent order withdrawing its K3.5 million pledge to DPP.

During a fundraising dinner and dance branded ‘Blue Night’ at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe on July 29 2017 where President Peter Mutharika was the guest of honour, DPP allegedly received about K13.5 million from public institutions, a gesture the CSOs argued amounted to misuse and abuse of public resources.

The CSOs pursuing the case are Centre for the Development of People (Cedep), Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR), Youth and Society (YAS), Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC) and Livingstonia Synod’s Church and Society Programme.

These CSOs sought a declaration of the court that the donations to DPP contravened the doctrine of public trust, the Constitution and the Public Finance Management Act.

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