…I wanted to verify their names, confesses suspect
The Malawi Police in Mangochi District on Thursday pounced on one of Saulos Chilima’s UTM presidential campaign members Al-Haj Ben Kambulire for buying voters’ certificates.
The suspect has since confessed to this publication saying he was collecting the voter IDs for verification purposes.
While confirming the arrest, Mangochi Police Station Spokesperson Inspector Roderick Maida refused to shed more light on the mater. Instead, he referred us to the National police spokesperson James Kadadzera.
But in an interview Kambulire, who is also a well-known businessperson in the district confirmed to this Reporter on the development, saying police searched his office where they found nothing.
“Yes I can confirm that today 21st February 2019 while I was at home I received a phone call from police summoning me to get them at my office. When I arrived there, I found police who showed me a search warrant to search my house on suspicion that I was keeping voters’ certificates,” he explained
Kambulire said he allowed them to go ahead with the searching but the police did not find anything.
“Although they did not find anything, the police advised me to keep them accompany to their station where they took me a caution statement before they freed me,” he pointed out.
Asked if he was indeed collecting voters’ certificates from the people Kabulire admitted, saying he wanted to verify if the people were indeed eligible voters as others want to benefit while they do not have voters’ certificates.
“I was just checking if the people indeed registered. After checking I was giving them back their certificates. But what I have seen is that this thing is borne of out jealousy because people were not expecting that UTM can have massive support in Mangochi,” he said while boasting to market Chilima and UTM.
Kambulire’s case comes at a time when the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) shadow parliamentarian, Shadrec Namalomba and councillors for Mangochi South West Constituency are embroiled in similar allegations, which police, say they are investigating.
Both DPP and UTM have accused each other of plotting to rig the forthcoming presidential elections.
