Namiwa’s CDEDI wants Govt to pay back funds used for Kamuzu Day celebrations, Kunkuyu says all holiday celebrations have costs
The Centre for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives (CDEDI) has urged the Tonse Government and President Dr. Lazarus Chakwera to rise above party politics and stop from dipping its fingers in the public to finance Malawi Congress Party (MCP) campaign rallies a head of the 2025 General Election.
CDEDI Executive Director Sylvester Namiwa spoke during a press briefing on Thursday in Lilongwe where he alleged that MCP hijacked the Kamuzu Day commemoration in Blantyre through political rhetoric which costed a whopping MK90 million of tax payers money.
Namiwa said, “By falling into the trap of politicizing the event, President Chakwera and his cronies only succeeded in diluting the importance of remembering the country’s first post-independence leader, the late Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda.”
He pointed out that the presidency should remind that earlier this year declared Malawi a state-of-disaster implying that the country needs well-wishers to feed its starving citizenry, therefore, it is only fair and prudent that should act as a parent in need of assistance to save his children from starvation.
CDEDI Executive Director further reminded that public debt has ballooned to unprecedented levels, staggering at MK13 trillion then there is no moral ground to caressly spend when the poor majority in this country are
literally struggling to survive.
In his comment, Minister of Information and Digitisation Moses Kunkuyu responded that when someone went into celebrating the Kamuzu Day, “It is more than the money that we are talking about, because even the people did not go into their businesses in respect to the Kamuzu Day.”
Kunkuyu explained that every national venture has a cost, whether it’s John Chilembwe Day or Kamuzu Day, there is a cost.
” On the sentiments that they are saying that the government changed the venue to Blantyre because we wanted to score a political point from but can you see that the event itself is directed as a celebration in political terms,” He added.
Information Minister further said the event was already planned for last year with announcements which have been there that Kamuzu Day and this year was in Blantyre.
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