{"id":4186,"date":"2011-07-26T11:12:16","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T11:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=4186"},"modified":"2011-07-26T11:12:16","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T11:12:16","slug":"malawi-president-given-ultimatum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2011\/07\/26\/malawi-president-given-ultimatum\/","title":{"rendered":"Malawi president given ultimatum"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThe main organisers of anti-government protests in Malawi have announced an ultimatum for the African country’s president to address their grievances or face more protests.<\/p>\n

Rafiq Hajat, director of the think-tank Institute for Policy Interaction, said on Tuesday that Bingu wa Mutharika has until August 16 to resolve persistent fuel and foreign exchange shortages in the country.<\/p>\n

He said if these demands were not addressed, protests would begin again on August 17.<\/p>\n

A petition presented to the government demands an audit on Mutharika’s finances as well as those of cabinet ministers.<\/p>\n

It also asks that state media not be used to threaten those with dissenting views.<\/p>\n

Protest leaders in hiding<\/p>\n

Mutharika accused opposition leaders and rights activists on Friday of seeking to stage a coup through the demonstrations, which left 19 dead over two days after police tried to suppress the protests.<\/p>\n

More coverage on protests in sub-Saharan Africa
\nIn a nationally broadcast speech, he named leaders who should face “consequences” for the protests.<\/p>\n

He reiterated a previous statement that he would “smoke out” the perpetrators of the violence, on Monday.<\/p>\n

“Those who did this are thugs and sons of Satan,” Mutharika said, echoing earlier statements.<\/p>\n

Many of the protest leaders have since gone into hiding.<\/p>\n

“The leaders have received death threats from unknown people,” a rights activist and protest organiser, Moses Mkandawire, told the AFP news agency on Monday.<\/p>\n

“They are in hiding for their personal safety and that of their family’s after the president said he would arrest them,” he said.<\/p>\n

Undule Mwakasungura, chairman of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, a coalition of over 80 rights groups which spearheaded the protests, and Hajat are in hiding.<\/p>\n

Joining the chorus<\/p>\n

The Public Affairs Committee, an umbrella group of Christian and Muslim activists in Malawi, joined the chorus of international condemnation of Mutharika’s handling of the crisis.<\/p>\n

“It was not right for the president to push blame on civil society groups” for the violence, Macdonald Kadawati, the head of the group, said.<\/p>\n

“Should government continue to harass people for no proper reasons, another demonstration will be inevitable,” Kadawati said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“Our patience is in short supply at the moment. Bullets and tear gas have never triumphed over the will of the people,” he said.<\/p>\n

While the military has withdrawn from major cities, police remained on the streets Monday when Mutharika visited shops and businesses that were attacked and looted during the unrest.<\/p>\n

Mutharika reshuffled the country’s military leadership on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The main organisers of anti-government protests in Malawi have announced an ultimatum for the African country’s president to address their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[135,465,515,258],"class_list":["post-4186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","tag-ngwazi-bingu-wa-mutharika","tag-dpp","tag-government","tag-malawi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186","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=4186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186\/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=4186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}