“Council used archaic and draconian tactics to deny citizens their constitutional right to peaceful demonstrations”
By Watipaso Mzungu
The Centre for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives (CDEDI) and the Blantyre Small Scale Business Operators have filed a fresh application for permission to the Blantyre City Council to hold peaceful demonstration on January 13 2021.
CDEDI and the business operators had initially planned to hold the protests on January 8 2021.
But according to CDEDI executive director Sylvester Namiwa, the city authorities used some archaic and draconian tactics to deny the citizens their constitutional right to peaceful demonstrations by sitting on the letter up to date.
Namiwa, in a statement issued on Friday morning, discloses that they were informed verbally by the personal secretary for Blantyre City Council Chief Executive Officer on January 6 2021, that the CEO had travelled to Lilongwe on official duties, and that there was still no official acknowledgement of CDEDI’s notice of the peaceful demonstrations.
“This to us was a very flimsy excuse because we didn’t believe that the CEO’s absence meant that business had to come to a halt at the city council. We tried in vain to contact the CEO, but all his mobile phones were out of reach. We do not want to believe that this was just a sheer coincidence,” he says in the statement.
He says it against this background that CDEDI and the Blantyre Small Scale Business Operators have once again written the council to make a fresh notice to hold peaceful demonstrations on Wednesday 13th January 2021 starting from 9:00 hours.
On the other hand, Namiwa has expressed disappointment over the manner the Minister of Youth and Sports, Ulemu Msungama, has handled his medical trip to India.
He says Msungama had violated the rights of the poor and deserving patients who have been on the waiting list for months without being flown abroad to access medical treatment to their various ailments.
“There is a long queue of Malawians at the country’s major referral hospitals with terminal illnesses requiring specialized treatment, but the Ministry of Health is yet to refer them to such foreign countries as India. We are therefore shocked that Honourable Msungana decided to bypass such long queues with a medical problem that would have easily been handled locally. This was very insensitive on the part of the minister, and we are disappointed with President Lazarus Chakwera for having authorized Honourable Msungama to travel on such very flimsy justifications, at the expense of the taxpayers’ money,” fumes Namiwa.
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