Blantyre City Council withholds permission to Cdedi demo: Namiwa blasts ‘draconian tactics’ to deny citizens’ rights
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 the organisation’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,” Namisa said 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.
Cdedi and the Lilongwe Small Scale Business Operators (LSSBO) recently organised first major peaceful demonstration against the Tonse Alliance government in Lilongwe with hundreds of protestors demanding leadership to respond to governance queries.
In their petition, Cdedi had 12 highlighted queries, which include irrational arrests, selective justice and the fact that illegal foreign nationals are taking over even businesses which struggling Malawians are supposed to be doing exclusively.
Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :
Mr Namiwa,why don’t you find means of having your business run?Almost every Malawian knows who you are and how you were being used by DPP now you want to become a champion kkkkkk.You thought you were clever in those days.
Let them demonstrate. Ma demo aipa lero? Boma ili palibe chanzeru chikuoneka. Time to dance to their tune
Kkkkk! I agree
Namiwa is a well known cadet and dpp is behind his raps. Malawians are angry with dpp and udf for bringing this country down. For example, the two parties never build enough secondary schools in Malawi since 1994 and as such of 255,000 pupils who wrote PSLE, only 85,000 have been selected. Can you dpp and udf explain what happens to the 170,000 left out? Yet this cadet NAmiwa is busy talking shit. This is genocide. Most of these are young boys and girls.
Selection has been done under the watch of this government. It has nothing to do with cadets or DPP. You are in control now so don’t blame your failures to innocent people. Muisova
They will go private universities and that’s the more reason government opened up space for the private sector to complement its efforts of eradicating ignorance through the establishment of educational institutions including secondary schools. USA and Australia have probably the largest number of privately run education institutions including universities. Let those who will not be selected to private public schools go to private schools if the can afford. Government already created space for attainment of education and affordability is another matter. Let private schools and parents push government to establish a scholarship fund to enable the poor send their children… Read more »
Yes, during Muluzi, there were more mosques built than all government structures put together, including schools
I beg to disagree with you on your example. Even during the MCP one party state, there were few secondary schools compared to primary schools such that many primary school learners could not make it to sec Schools. It was even worse that many sec School learners could not make it to the one university we had at the time. It was also difficult to pursue university studies privately then unless you had money to do so by correspondence through univeersity of south africa. I think it is much better now than then because if you want to study, you… Read more »
Empty tin
Cadet Namiwa still want to be relevant , your days are long gone . Everyone knows that u are bitter with the loss of your Gogo Muntharika .
Noone is taking u seriously , so stop your nonsense for once .