UTM victory has started, says Chilima: Malawi veep vows to defend democracy ‘relentlessly’

Vice President Saulos Chilima has said Friday’s court ruling to register UTM as a political party is the start of ‘a road to victory’ for the party in next year’s tripartite elections.

Chilima who is also current leader of UTM spoke during a resource mobilization dinner and dance for UTM dubbed ‘Kuwala night’ held at Comesa Hall in Blantyre Friday night.

“Today is a victory day. It is a day of celebration. The ruling today is a celebration. There was also another celebration this afternoon because they wanted to kick the Speaker out but the courts have said he should stay in his postion, so this is a celebration day,” said Chilima.

Earlier in the day, High Court Judge John Chirwa ruled that the Registrar of Political Parties should register UTM as a political party within seven days from 21st September 2018.

The High Court also threw out an application to remove Speaker of Parliament Richard Msowoya for associating himself with UTM.

Immediately after the court ruling on UTM registration, social media was awash with propaganda reports that government had appealed against the ruling, but Chilima called on his supporters not to be intimidated.

“We have zero apology to make for winning the court case just like we will have no apology for winning elections in 2019. It is victory after victory for us. Do not be intimidated, no amount of propaganda should sway us. Don’t worry about trivia or garbage, if they want to appeal, the courts are not far from here, we will meet them there and again victory will come this (our) way.”

“We will defend democracy, we will do everything we can to defend our democracy . We will defend our democracy relently. If it means we must go to court we will go to court, if we must go to the streets we will [protests].. We do not owe anybody an apology  for winning a court case, in fact we are celebrating, and this is the start of our victory to 2019 elections,” said Chilima.

He said UTM will hold a victory rally in Nkhota Kota Saturday and will hold its elective conference at the end of this month followed by primaries.

Chilima asked ‘those who went into hiding because of registration issues to come out now because it will be victory after victory.’

“We say goodbye to United Transformation Movement and we welcome UTM. This is the name that we have decided to call ourselves; no one can decide what name to give us. We will call ourselves UTM because it is a victorious name,” said Chilima.

Apart from the sumptuous dinner, there were also music performances by legendary musician Lucius Banda and Saul Chembezi and also a raffle draw and pledges with businessman  and UTM executive member Newton Kambala pledging K10 million.

The organizing committee is yet to make an announcement on how much they have managed to realize during the Kuwala Night.

At the High Court, Judge John Chirwa described the decision by the registrar of Political Parties to reject UTM application as “unreasonable and unjustifiable” and ordered its registration within seven days.

He said in his 25-minute ruling that the  registrar erred in not considering the documents UTM presented before him such as the manifesto and constitution and instead only used information from the public domain.

“It is the further considered view of this court that what is relevant for consideration by the respondent [registrar of Political Parties] at the time of registration is the name as presented in the requisite document,” he said.

Further, the court said it did not find anything to stop a political party which was previously known by one name to proceed to apply for registration using a different name.

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