By Staff Reporter
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) vice-president (North) Goodall Gondwe says all those against the party’s leadership must leave and join other political entities.The former minister of Finance said he hopes the party will put its divisions behind and get united ahead of 2025 elections.
Gondwe said this on Sunday at Edingeni in Mzimba on the sidelines of the ordination of Inkosi ya Makhosi M’mbelwa V into the Men’s Guild and Eldership of the CCAP Synod of Livingstonia.
He said: “I would like the party to come together, and I think we will. Those who do not agree [with Peter Mutharika] will have to leave the party, that’s how things are. “Not everybody agrees with the leadership, but if you don’t agree with the party, then you must go somewhere else. That’s what must happen.”
Gondwe’s sentiments come at a time there have been deep divisions in the former governing party.
Disagreements came to light after secretary general Greselder Jeffrey told Newspapers in 2020 that Mutharika had done his part and the party needed a new person to lead it into the future.
In October 2020, DPP vice-president (South) Kondwani Nankhumwa, Jeffrey, Jappie Mhango and Mulanje West legislator Yusuf Nthenda were expelled from the party for allegedly influencing the rejection of APM’s appointment of former Nsanje Central legislator Francis Kasaila as Leader of Opposition in Parliament to replace Nankhumwa.
Although the four successfully obtained court relief stopping DPP from sacking them from their positions and expelling, there has been bad blood between ‘the Nankhumwa camp’ and the Mutharika faction. Nankhumwa and Jeffrey refused to be drawn to comment on Goodall’s comments.
Mutharika lost the court-ordered June 23 2020 Fresh Presidential Election to the nine-party Tonse Alliance led by MCP president Lazarus Chakwera who partnered Mutharika’s then estranged Vice-President Saulos Chilima of UTM Party.
He took over the leadership of DPP after the death of his brother, Bingu wa Mutharika in April 2012, propelling the party to victory in the 2014 Tripartite Elections.
