'MADEYA'SYNDROME STILL HAUNTING UDF

UDF's National chairman and former President, Bakili Muluzi is a bitter and frustrated man.He looks confused and desperate. Desperate for power and revenge to his handpicked successor Bingu Mutharika which will unlikely work out as the Malawians he is dealing with now are not the same people who danced to his tune after being brutalised by the Malawi Congress party for thirty years.

Confused for failing to read from Bingu's face that he was not one of them,though he was putting on a yellow shirt throughout the 2004 campaign period but deep down inside he wasn't.Muluzi is indeed a bitter confused man.Imagine the millions he invested in Bingu's campaign which some UDF senior officials pegged at k200million, and in the process dislocating his spine.

However Dr Bingu Mutharika had his own plans for Malawi and himself and though he played second fiddle to Muluzi thoughout the campaign he knew what he was doing and just after swearing in as the third head of state for Malawi on that May 2004 chilly morning ,at the half empty Kamuzu Stadium,he showed his true colours.

As people of Zingwangwa,Chimwankhunda and Chilobwe townships were enganged in running battles with the police, protesting the results of the election ,Bingu immediately started bitting the hand of Muluzi silently by the way he addressed Malawians present and those who were listening at home from their radios when he stressed that he will deal with corrupt officials which was just lip service during Muluzi tenure of office,thereby bringing hope to those people who thought that Muluzi's system of corruption will continue.

Afew months after Bingu's swearing in as the President, rumours started circulating as it is common in Malawi, that Mutharika was plannning to resurrect his killed United Party but rumour mongers were wrong as he came up with a different baby,Democratic People's Party(DPP)which came with a storm across Malawi and to test the waters the baby passed its test by winning all the six seats on Dececember 6 2006 bye elections thus putting more misery on Muluzi's face.

What interested me most that time was the reaction of Muluzi in the Nation Newspaper as he only said he can't believe that Bingu's party has won all the seats as DPP had no structures on the ground,but the writing was on the wall for all to see.To me i saw that as an acknowledgement of defeat by a man who claims to be a political engineer.

Instead of of sitting down with his men in the excecutive committee of the party to plan the way forwad after Bingu's depature and the mass exodus of senior members who went with him to form his DPP, Muluzi chose a wrong path again.Romours again started circulating that Muluzi was planning a come back to wrestle power from Mutharika through a third term fine tuned after noticing what he thinks is a loophole in the Malawi Consitution.

My comrade John Mbali who was then working at Lozi in Nkhotakota tipped me that Campaign Director for UDF Clement Sitambuli was having meetings with people there encouraging them to vote for Muluzi at the party's convention.That was in 2006 and looking at Sitambuli i believed what i heard as he was the one who led campaign for the failed third and open terms and am not even suprised that he has been picked as Muluzi's running mate for he has been a good boy to him.

I guess that Muluzi want to run himself because he doesn't trust anyone else in the party and that ,he still believes that all executive members remaining in the UDF were 'madeya'maize bram according to the late UDF governor of the South Davis Kapito.I felt that the situation is still like that in the party as no new faces faces have joined since Bingu and senior leaders like Ken Lipenga,Henry Chimunthu Banda,Patricia Kaliati,Henry Mussa,and several others dumped it.I mean faces who can add credibility to the party heirachy.

People like Brown James Mpinganjira who just rejoined the UDF just after the elections, to be in government cannot be trusted by Bakili Muluzi as he first run away from UDF the same way Bingu did and he has already pulled a trigger by claiming openly that Muluzi can't be allowed to stand as the laws doesn't allow him in an interview with the Daily Times reporter recently.

In a twist of events Brown Mpinganjira has already joined Tembo's MCP as a running mate while claiming to be still a member of UDF and the party has resorted to fire him and replacing him as its candidate for Mulanje Central in the coming general elections with Ruth Lemani.

What is more confusing is that BJ claims to have been sent to MCP by Muluzi himself and John Tembo is also claiming the same while UDF as a party is disassociating itself from the arrangement and most people are now suprised with the new twist of events.It's very unlikely for these two parties to work together as they have two different ideologies with UDF mostly interested in getting rid of Mutharika without even offering Malawians good plans for the nation .

Muluzi himself is to blame for accepting back Mpinganjira in UDF as he knows him very well as a very clever politician .He would have remembered that Mpinganjira has been eyeing the presidency and that's why he formed his disbanded National Democratic Alliance to fight Muluzi's attempts to come back to power.

All these things happening in Udf show that there are big cracks in the Party and once the Electoral Commission comes up with the decision that Muluzi will not stand there will be mass exodus from UDF as the party will go without a candidate and Muluzi's prophecy that some parties will finish like cutains(zitha ngati makatani)will be fullfilled on his own beloved UDF.

I dont know what else Muluzi will do once he will be barred and my collegue Chikadzakuwani wrote me an email claiming that Muluzi is planning to feature his wife Nadzimbiri in 2014 General Elections.I dont know if thats true but you never know as in Malawi it's all rumours throughout the year.