By Vincent Gunde

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has issued a strongly worded statement accusing the Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) of being hypocrites and practicing selective activism . The Party has asked HRDc to stay away from the DPP advising it to rediscover itself and begin to hold President Chakwera accountable for untold misery on Malawians who voted them into power.

The DPP has claimed that the HRDC has no single iota of credibility because the organization has proven to be an extension of Tonse Alliance and any statement coming from it is only a smokescreen to blindfold Malawians that they still exist, when in true sense, it is dead and buried.

The party has encouraged Malawians to question HRDC’s effectiveness in scrutinizing the Tonse Alliance government and its role in unbiased and objective advocacy assuring it that DPP is rising, DPP is winning the 2025 elections with or without HRDC hypocrisy and selective activism.

In a statement dated 5th January, 2024 signed by Shadric Namalomba, Presidential and party Spokesperson, the DPP says HRDC is afraid to bite the hand that has been feeding them and they let go all the maladministration taking place from Chakwera’s state house down to the local councils.
The DPP says the HRDC has lost its teeth because its agenda was simply to remove it out from office in 2020 observing that if it were during its administration, HRDC would have mobilized nationwide protests against the 44 percent devaluation and the massive price increases which are severely affecting the cost of living.

The party observed that soon after the 2020 elections, HRDC organized celebrations and threw parties in places, its top leaders were co-opted into senior government positions with one Timothy Pagonachi Mtambo being appointed a cabinet minister.

It says other HRDC officials were appointed to diplomatic missions abroad with others rewarded positions and procurement contracts in government and parastatals claiming that this was a deliberate move by President Chakwera’s administration to weaken HRDC so that it cannot effectively criticize Tonse’s serious blunders, promises and lies.

“No wonder, nowadays, the HRDC is struggling to caution the corruption taking place in the Chakwera’s administration,” reads the statement in part.

The DPP says HRDC is struggling to organize demonstrations against the hundreds of mercenaries that have politically been recruited and appointed into several government offices at Capital Hill and that it is failing to caution President Chakwera against political patronage in parastatals where MCP sympathizers have been deployed in various state-owned companies.