PROGRESSIVE REPORT ON THE DEMONSTRATION IN MALAWI AT 14:20

LILONGWE At 14.20, Zodiac radio has obtained copy of court order from Weapon Kita Lawyer for demonstrators at Lilongwe High Court vacating injunction sought by China Ronald Mbekeani late last night to stop the demonstrations. This means the demonstrators are now free to demonstrate peacefully. The lesson from this is that it was unwise for China Mbekeani to seek the court injunction after the Police had already granted approval for the peaceful demonstrations. This shows that the DDP is leaderless. Members do what they like for personal benefits. The aim is to please Bingu. Ordinarily, China Mbekeani is a small person in the DPP to take this decision. Consequently it created planning problems to the Police in Mzuzu and Lilongwe resulting in unnecessary confrontations. In Blantyre and Zomba the Police deserve commendation because there has been no reported violence. It means Blantyre and Zomba Police have good leadership. As the day is still early, we can report that except for Mzuzu and Lilongwe, the demonstrations have been peaceful. This is what should have been the case if China Mbekeani had not taken a unilateral decision. In fact Bingu contributed to these problems. He should have accepted the demonstrations as a Constitutional Right and not come up with his Public Lecture. Like the NGO leaders had predicted, the overall assessment is that the Lecture was a total waste of time. The broad line given by Bingu looked revisionists. Instead of accepting where mistakes have been made, Bingu was allocating blame to the IMF and car imports from Japan. There is a dichotomy from Bingu.While crying for financial bailout from the international community, he claimed he could not be pushed around. The question is how he get bail out when he does not accept IMF prescriptions. How the financial bail out when the IMF is not involved? It is the IMF that must build up a case for a country to qualify for bail out. From this, it is obvious that Bingu is arrogant. He thinks he knows everything. It is unfortunate that his praise singers were clapping hands for nonsense like that. One thing that is obvious is that Bingu is living in the past. He wants to take Malawians back to 1964 when founding President Dr Banda was fighting for political independence. It was easy to gain political independence because of guidelines in the UN Charter of population, territorial geography, leadership and history. Economic independence is not easy to attain. You cannot just wake up and declare that you are economically independent. There is need for steady development of resource capacity not just food. Truthfully, Bingu is out of date. He is not fit to continue ruling the country.