{"id":9439,"date":"2012-04-23T07:03:02","date_gmt":"2012-04-23T07:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=9439"},"modified":"2012-04-23T07:03:02","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T07:03:02","slug":"businessman-aims-for-the-throne-forms-new-party-ahead-of-2014-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/23\/businessman-aims-for-the-throne-forms-new-party-ahead-of-2014-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Businessman aims for the throne, forms new party ahead of 2014 elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Sandton-based Malawian businessman has announced his bid to campaign for his country\u2019s 2014 presidential elections following the death of President Bingu wa Mutharika earlier this month.
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Mutharika during his campaign <\/p><\/div>
\nLawrence Sichinga, 50, who has been in exile in South Africa since the early 1980s, recently registered a new political party, the African Nyasaland Party , and has already launched his campaign to become the country\u2019s next president.<\/p>\n

Mutharika, 78, died earlier this month after being flown to South Africa in a coma following a heart attack. Mutharika was laid to rest at his farm in the Thyolo District in Malawi yesterday at a funeral attended by heads of state from across the continent.<\/p>\n

Malawi\u2019s vice-president, Joyce Banda, is likely to complete Mutharika\u2019s term up to 2014, but Sichinga said he had started campaigning for the elections.<\/p>\n

Before leaving for the funeral, Sichinga said he had decided to campaign after approaches from labour movements, NGOs, traditional leaders and church organisations in Malawi.<\/p>\n

He believed his party had a chance to win the elections, having been told his countrymen were hungry for new leaders. \u201cThe people say they are tired of recycled career politicians,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sichinga said he would urge Malawian nationals in foreign countries \u2013 including the estimated one million Malawians in South Africa, between 200000 and 400000 in the UK, and others spread across Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia \u2013 to vote for his party and to return to their country to offer it crucial skills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Sandton-based Malawian businessman has announced his bid to campaign for his country\u2019s 2014 presidential elections following the death of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[643],"tags":[2189,300,466,2190,846,2191,2192],"class_list":["post-9439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malawi-2014-elections","tag-african-nyasaland-party","tag-bingu-wa-mutharika","tag-joyce-banda","tag-lawrence-sichinga","tag-malawian","tag-nyasaland-party","tag-sandton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9439","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=9439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}