PP insists DPP responsible for Malawi’s lost billions: Cash-gate
The governing People’s Party (PP) insists that it is proud that the administration of President Joyce Banda, unlike the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) regime, has invested immeasurable commitment to rooting out fraud and corruption in Malawi.
The PP urges the now opposition DPP to accept full responsibility for orchestrating the looting of public funds and property from 2005 instead of playing victim of imaginary conspiracy theories as a sadistic effort to diverting public attention from its immoral grabbing of government resources.
In a media statement dated October 28, 2013, signed by the PP’s Deputy Secretary General, Frank Tumpale Mwenifumbo, the ruling PP wonders why the DPP sounds bitter that Malawi’s flagship newspaper The Nation recently revealed not only the fact that the Bingu wa Mutharika administration masterminded what has become to be known as the “cash-gate” scandal, but also that during its time in power, around K90 billion was either lost or mismanaged between 2009 and early 2012.
“This figure does not include the additional rot that could have been discovered from 14 other government departments or ministries that were not audited alongside the others because the DPP government stopped the audit from proceeding, probably fearing that it would expose high level DPP officials,” explains Mwenifumbo in the statement.
“The DPP, in its statement, released at the weekend demands that evidence be produced proving its thieving governance architecture. We are not sure what evidence the DPP wants, especially given that The Daily Times today (Monday October 28) reports that the party admits that indeed plundering happened unabated on its watch,” the PP contends.
The PP deputy secretary general says his party wonders why the DPP continues to “arrogantly insult the intelligence of Malawians “ who were seriously victimized under the DPP regime and fully know how the previous government mismanaged Malawi.
“During the Mutharika era, Malawians were being insulted with such derogatory names ‘chickens’, among other crude names whenever they demanded transparency and accountability from the DPP leadership.
“Malawians will not take such insults and deliberate disinformation anymore and the DPP should know that they are on notice. We would like to bring to the attention of the world that the K90 billion in stolen funds is contained in an interim investigative audit report of the Integrated Financial Management and Information System (Ifmis) carried out by the National Audit Office (NAO), which is Malawi’s supreme auditing institution.
“It should further be noted that it was the Ministry of Finance, during the Mutharika administration, which commissioned the audit. Is the DPP saying that the findings of the audit that the then ruling party commissioned itself is now false? What kind of evidence of resource abuse does the DPP want when its own President, Professor Peter Mutharika, is staying in a house that a National Audit Office audit found to have been illegally bought and demanded that it be returned to Lilongwe City Council?” says the PP.
The PP wonders what kind of evidence about its ruthless plundering does the DPP want when “its own leader in Parliament illegally bought a public building in Limbe where government was accommodating a Secretariat for a medical school project that would have trained doctors and clinicians to save lives of Malawians, including mothers and children?”
“The DPP’s own founder inexplicably accumulated wealth from a mere K150 million of mainly obsolete assets to more than K61 billion in just eight years? The PP believes in the enduring intelligence of Malawians and would not, in any way, insult them with twisted information as DPP is doing,” reads the statement, made available to Nyasa Times.
The PP says it is unfortunate that the DPP attempts to drag President Dr. Joyce Banda into its “ring of nefarious activities by claiming that she was part of the government at the time”.
“Granted, President Banda was technically the Vice President at the time. But Malawians know that she was a Vice President in name only. Malawians remember vividly how as Vice President she was sidelined, especially in the day-to-day running of government,” reads the scathing statement.
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