I had no issues with the late Bingu Wa Mutharika

Malawi’s first democratically elected President Bakili Muluzi has expressed surprise at how his handpicked successor the late Bingu Wa Mutharika just dumped the United Democratic Front (UDF) which sponsored his candidacy to form his own Democratic Progressive party (DPP).

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According to him, the late Bingu, an economist by profession and served as Secretary General for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), was an ideal candidate for the job.

The former President indicated in an interview on Times Television that he identified Mutharika between 2002- 2004 after noting that the country needed economic transformation.

Muluzi branded as propaganda sentiments that he wanted to be pulling strings from behind.

“Up to this day, I don’t know the reasons why Mutharika did what he did. After 10 years of being President, what else could I be looking for? It was after he started the arrests and re-arrests that I started considering the effort I put for him to become the President and sentiments that I will deflate the tube which I pumped were coming from others likes of Kachimbwinda.

“There were no reasons personally between me and him. He is the one who had issues which I didn’t know”

During the interview, he indicated that the attempts for his supposedly third term in office were not of his making but orchestrated by those who surrounded him.

“I used to call them privately that this issue you’re advancing where will it take us? The laws were clear and when it went to Parliament it was defeated by three votes out of the 193 members of Parliament it was discovered that three shot it down.

“I told them that let’s just leave the issue”