By Linda Kwanjana
When Peter Mutharika expressed his interest to stand for presidency in 2014, some quarters expressed their reservation on his choice of leadership because they, among other things, questioned his loyalty to the nation.
Firstly he was someone who had spent all his entire productive life outside the country and had ideally returned home only when his brother ascended to the position of Head of State.
To prove wrong those who questioned his loyalty and allegiance to the Malawian flag, he revealed in one of his media interviews that he has two daughters and a son who are all in the USA, and promised to invite them, something he indeed fulfilled within a short space of time.
However, my interest is in his son who he claimed is a practicing lawyer in America; is he a Malawian or he is colonized to the bone? When he was asked why he did not attend his aunt’s funeral, Bingu Wa Mutharika’s wife, if memory serves me right, APM defended his absence that he was too busy such that he couldn’t attend the funeral because the courts were in session in America. However, people expected to see him when the country lost Bingu while serving as president of the country but nothing was heard of him, let alone on his father’s both inaugurations.
This has therefore invited more questions than answers among Malawians who have questioned the so-called loyalty of the former president and his family to Malawi. How can someone who served as president of the republic for almost 7 years, fail to convince his own child to set his feet on land that honoured his father with a mantle of power to be at the helm of government? This is unthinkable and hypocrisy of the highest level to say the least.
This has compelled other quarters to make a hasty generalization that it’s the former president himself who discourages his immediate family from visiting Malawi because of his divided loyalty, and in simple terms he is someone who claims to be patriotic to a country he doesn’t inwardly belong to.
