Lazurus Chakwera yesterday got a shock of his life in Parliament when he got exposed that he is training MCP youths as militias at Mtakataka Police Training School.
Chakwera went to Parliament to answer questions from members of the august house.
The bombshell came as a supplementary question from DPP MP George Chaponda.
After Chakwera went at length trying to explain his administration’s youth empowerment programme, Chaponda stood to ask the President a question on the matter.
The Mulanje lawmaker asked Chakwera whether the 75 MCP youths being trained in using guns at Mtakataka Police Training School in Dedza is part of the so-called youth development programmes of the Chakwera government.
This question, being a supplementary question, stunned Chakwera as he did not expect it. Also, he did not expect it that the secret is known.
Aware that the question had swept his boss off his feet, Leader of the House Richard Chimwendo Banda stood on point of order. And while he thought he was trying to save the President from embarrassment, his explanation only confirmed that the party is training its youths into militias at a public facility.
Chimwendo who is Minister of Home Affairs which is responsible for police service said Chakwera could not tackle the question as it bordered on national security, which effectively confirmed it.
Speaker Gotani Hara, who is MCP’s Deputy Secretary General granted Chimwendo’s point of order.
But the cat was already out of the bag.
The training of party youths using public resources is clearly a flagrant abuse of state resources by Chakwera and government.
But more ominous is that the training of the youths as gun toting militias spells a return to the dark days when MCP had paramilitary wings and bloodletting youth cadres who led the brutalisation of Malawians during the party’s 31-year rule between 1964 and 1994.
DPP did the same so get over it.