Africa-Press – Malawi. Let me begin where I will end: Minister of Civic Education and National Unity Timothy Mtambo is exhibiting a disturbing political identity crisis that, I shudder to think, will surely cost him his well fought for political capital.
You see, Mtambo started off as a militant civil rights activist while heading Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC). He made his name by being apolitically correct, choosing to side with the struggle of the people than donning hardcore political colours.
However, when he ditched HRDC and formed Citizen for Transformation (CFT) movement, Mtambo went deep into frontline politics when he endorsed and fully supported the Tonse Alliance.
If we heard him right while forming his political movement, Mtambo’s main political end was to remove the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) from power.
In other words, he wanted to remove the DPP from power through working with Tonse Alliance partners without submitting to political ideals of the partners.
The strategy really worked as he managed to capture several Malawians who had lost faith in the behavior of their respective political parties. However, as of today, Mtambo needs to sit down and reflect his political journey because the dynamics that got CFT started is fast waning.
As already argued, CFT was formed to help remove DPP from power. With DPP out of power, it means CFT’s mission was accomplished; as such, CFT needs to redefine its political relevance especially in the context of Tonse Alliance.
In fact, it’s Mtambo and CFT’s failure to clearly redefine itself that is why Tonse Alliance key partners, MCP and UTM, are at loggerheads in Karonga Central Constituency.
As we all know, Mtambo took quite a controversial decision to support MCP’s candidate Leornard Mwalwanda in the coming Karonga Central by-elections over UTM’s Frank Mwenifumbo.
There is nothing wrong with Mtambo exercising his political choices but there is something terribly wrong when an alliance partner chooses to form another alliance within an already existing alliance. Its sounds like betrayal.
If Mtambo didn’t want CFT to field a candidate in Karonga Central, he would have left CFT members to decide on their own whom, among contesting candidates, they should silently support—just as what other alliance partners have done.
By publicly endorsing support for MCP candidate, I feel like Mtambo wants to use CFT to broker his political glory. He just wants to be in good terms with MCP and President Lazarus Chakwera for political goodies to continue flowing to his side. That, to me, sounds like political greed and opportunism.
Mtambo has already gone to great length campaigning for MCP in Mangochi, even apologising for the past atrocities of the one-party dictatorship. Given a platform, all I can tell Mtambo is: register CFT as a political party, field your candidates and contest with fellow alliance partners in that regards. He must not play a civil rights activist with political colours in a political game. It’s called opportunism—quite a bad political etiquette.
Let me, then, end where I began: Minister of Civic Education and National Unity Timothy Mtambo is exhibiting a disturbing political identity crisis that, I shudder to think, will surely cost him his well fought for political capital. Mtambo is deeply divisive figure.
