President Mutharika Meets CMD Members; Advocates For Interparty Dialogue As Cornerstone Of Development

President Peter Mutharika says Malawi will move forward if all political parties embrace tolerance and dialogue.

The Malawi leader, was speaking at Kamuzu Palace on Thursday, evening during his meeting with members of Center for Multiparty Democracy (CMD).

“I would like to assure you the members of CMD, that Government will do all it can to support the noble cause that you have. We need dialogue in order to work together. We have one Malawi, and its development is the responsibility of all of us.” Said Mutharika

He also appealed to CMD and all Political Parties to promote Patriotism, Integrity and hard work.

Mutharika also expressed his profound appreciation with developments taking place at CMD. He mentioned that he was happy to hear number of important issues that have been discussed in CMD relating to the general principle for the regulation of political parties; the political independence of registrar of political parties; process of registering and de-registering political party’s; transparency and accountability of political parties among others.

“This is interesting and commendable” he added

The CMD meeting with President was first of its kind because there has never been a meeting between the grouping and sitting President. 

CMD executive director, Kizito Tenthani indicated that the institution was through the engagement introducing board members and Political Party’s bill to president as well updated him of number of activities that were carried out by the institution.

At the end of the closed meeting with the president, Tenthani said president Mutharika has given a nod to the proposed Political Parties Bill, “He has said that he will try to see to it that the bill runs though its necessary process and he agreed that it was important for the country to have effective political parties and one of the ways he said is to look at the legal regulations of political parties.”

The bill which has been endorsed by all political parties, seeks political parties to be exercise accountability and transparency on their source of financing, internal democracy in political parties as well as making sure that political parties have legal personality so that political parties can sue or be sued. The bill further encourages effectiveness of the Office of the Registrar of Political Parties.

Tenthani also indicated that President Mutharika has asked CMD look for other sustainable sources of funding for the institution as well as consider issues of safeguarding independence of CMD after the institution had requested the President to be assisted financially by the Government.

Tenthani further mentioned that the president also has welcomed the idea of establishing Leaders of Political Parties Forum but “he did not make a commitment because he noted that we didn’t have enough time to engage on other things but on principle he seemed to have no problem”

Currently there are seven political parties that are members for CMD and the board comprises of Political Party Secretary Generals.