Malawi road to 2014 Elections: Court case is not a winning strategy

Another stupid item in the People’s Party closet of reasoning is this notion namely that Peter Mutharika is not a good candidate of the DPP because he has pending court cases. Damn!

Tell that to Raila Odinga and he will quickly invite the PP to his school of learning that using a pending court case against an opponent is not a strategy.

He will tell the PP that he, himself, packed all his eggs in the basket of warning voters away from Uhuru Kenyatta because he has a waiting case at the Hague and the basket fell, and with it the eggs went breaking into pieces.

Come the voting day, the people of Kenya, in their collective wisdom, voted for the Hague suspect. Mr President of the Republic of Kenya this minute you are reading this is a suspect.

This never mattered to the people of Kenya. They looked at issues. And regardless of his status as a suspect, Kenyatta made to them as someone whose issues resonated with their aspirations.

Instead of talking about how good he was and what good he would bring to the people of Kenya, Odinga dwelt on scare politics.

In the voting booths, the Kenyans remembered the one who spoke to their aspirations not to their fears.

This is how fear mongering never worked in Kenya.

Back in 2008, facing Barack Obama, John Mccain, thought using the scare tactics of placing a tag of a moslem on his opponent for which he wanted to portray him as sharing a faith with many terrorists and therefore a dangerous leader would work.

It never worked. The American people never bought into such tactics. Obama ended up vanquishing McCain in his victory by a landslide.

Such has been the pedigree of scare politics. They are a flop as a strategy.

The PP would be naïve to put their hopes of winning against Peter Mutharika in an election on the cases that pend against him in court.

Unless the PP knows that it controls the courts, how can the party be so sure that the cases that Peter Mutharika is facing would work against his candidature?

Are those cases as straightforward, and are they the kind whose conviction would prevent one from standing in an election?

When did the PP become a court of law? Even if they were one, are verdicts against a suspect passed before he is heard?

Maybe the PP are sending out a message that under their administration courts are being muzzled to make decisions that favour the party.

Whichever is true, the fact of the matter is that the PP should not dwell on the pending cases against Peter Mutharika instead of working out a proper campaign strategy.

Because if the courts should be independent as it is officially believed they are, one can not guarantee the outcome and the timeline of the cases.

The one against Bakili Muluzi has lasted the past eight years. The one against Chilumpha went into smoke after eating into five years. Who knows how long cases of Peter Mutharika will last.

They may go beyond the wire of 2014.