UDF, DPP coalition confirmed – Malawi paper

Leader of government in parliament and spokesman of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Francis Kasaila has confirmed  that the DPP  has a  working relationship with United Democratic Front (UDF) whose  president Atupele Muluzi is serving in the President Peter Mutharika cabinet.

Muluzi persuaded his party into a parliamentary working coalition with DPP with a silent pact.

“It’s true we have been holding caucuses together with the UDF as you know the UDF president is a Cabinet minister in the DPP government,” Kasaila is quoted confirming in the Weekend Nation of October 11.

The paper reports that when the Budget Session of Parliament was winding up last week and National Assembly Speaker Richard Msowoya announced in the House that the government side was to meet later, Muluzi and UDF parliamentarians made the meeting jointly

Relying on unnamed sources that attended the meeting, the paper reported that Muluzi, who is Minister of Energy, Mining, Environment and Natural Resources, directed all UDF party members to support government both materially and financially, especially during Tuesday’s by-elections in Blantyre and Thyolo which the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won.

UDF leader in the House Lucius Banda, who also attended the caucus and party spokesman Ken Ndanga, could not comment to the paper.

But a senior UDF official who spoke to Nyasa Times said DPP and UDF “can be traced from the same political family tree and its imperative to advance their common progressive and transformative leadership by burying the hatchets that had separated them. We are one people.”

DPP uses blue as its political colour while UDF uses yellow and blue.