{"id":3230,"date":"2011-07-05T13:31:36","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T13:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=3230"},"modified":"2011-07-05T13:31:36","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T13:31:36","slug":"wa-mutharika-destroying-malawi-democracy-says-namibia-ngo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2011\/07\/05\/wa-mutharika-destroying-malawi-democracy-says-namibia-ngo\/","title":{"rendered":"Wa Mutharika destroying Malawi democracy says Namibia NGO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <strong>LILONGWE (Malawi Democrat) \u2013Malawi \u00a0President Bingu wa Mutharika \u00a0has been accused of\u00a0 destroying the country\u2019s democratic tenets and the rule of law through his\u00a0 dictatorial style of leadership, the Namibia-based\u00a0 Forum for the Future of Africa said in a statement.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cMalawi, the\u00a0 second poorest country in the world, is descending back to dictatorship and\u00a0 autocracy. Barely 19 years after democracy was taking root, a new leadership has\u00a0 come to mess up everything the population of Malawi had struggled to put\u00a0 together in 1993,\u201d \u00a0<em>The Nation<\/em> quotes \u00a0the statement titled: \u2018Malawi\u2019s democratic pillars are\u00a0 being destroyed\u2019 signed by Saunders Jumah, the forum\u2019s founding trustee.<\/p>\n<p>The forum cites the recent expulsion of British High Commissioner \u00a0Mr Fergus Cochrane-Dyet as\u00a0 one of such destructive decisions<\/p>\n<p>The NGO \u00a0also pleaded with the British\u00a0 government and other development partners not to punish Malawians by cutting\u00a0 financial aid because of some \u201cdestructive decisions made by few individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to\u00a0<em>The Nation<\/em>, the\u00a0 statement says Mutharika, who during his first term of office was touted as the\u00a0 \u201cengineer\u201d of the economy, is now leading a country that is struggling with\u00a0 numerous problems, such as low wages for civil servants, fuel and forex\u00a0 shortages and erratic supply of electricity and water.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we are worried and concerned about is the unilateral decisions to\u00a0 change the Constitution of Malawi by enacting his [Mutharika] own laws that back\u00a0 his personal vendettas such as the Police Act, the Injunctions Law, the media\u00a0 act [amendment to Section 46 of the Penal Code that empowers the Minister of\u00a0 Information to ban local publications] and other unnecessary\u00a0 laws.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_815\">\n<div id=\"attachment_3231\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3231\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3231\" title=\"bingo-300x149\" src=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/bingo-300x149.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"149\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3231\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">WA MUTHARIKA: Destroyer of democrcay<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>But Minister\u00a0 of Information and Civic Education Symon Vuwa Kaunda, who is also government\u00a0 spokesperson, said it is surprising that several international\u00a0 institutions would want to paint a negative picture about governance in Malawi\u00a0 when the situation on the ground is different.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LILONGWE (Malawi Democrat) \u2013Malawi \u00a0President Bingu wa Mutharika \u00a0has been accused of\u00a0 destroying the country\u2019s democratic tenets and the rule [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[274],"tags":[220,905,347,303],"class_list":["post-3230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dpp-3","tag-democracy","tag-namibia","tag-ngo","tag-ngwazi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}