Malawi opposition parties, activists demand immediate release of plane crash report

LILONGWE, Malawi

Opposition political parties and civil society activists in Malawi are demanding immediate release to the public of a report into the plane crash that killed Vice President Saulosi Chilima and eight others on June 10.

In June, the government tasked German Aviation experts to “thoroughly investigate” the circumstances that led to the plane crash. But findings of the investigations have not yet been made public.

During his recent trip to Germany, President Lazarus Chakwera told German media that a report of the plane crash was submitted to his government, “but it’s not yet reached the right office, but we will make it available to the public at an appropriate time.”

In a statement released on Thursday, Shadreck Namalomba, the main opposition Democratic Party (DPP) Publicity Secretary, described the “delay” to make the report public as a “betrayal of trust.”

“We demand transparency in the tragic plane crash investigations. The DPP firmly believes that the people of Malawi deserve to know the truth about the circumstances surrounding this tragic incident. We are appalled by the government’s failure to keep the public informed. This lack of transparency only fuels suspicion and undermines the public’s trust in the government’s commitment to accountability,” Namalomba said.

“We therefore demand immediate release of the complete investigative report to the public without any further delay. We urge all Malawians to join us in calling for the government to do what is right and necessary to restore public trust and confidence in our nation’s leadership,” he said.

Patricia Kaliati, the secretary general of the United Transformation Movement (UTM), founded by Chilima, said: “We are following what’s happening with keen interest. But we have every hope that the government will do the needful to make public findings of the plane crash public, otherwise people’s anger will boil up. But we don’t want things to get there.”

“The nation is anxious to know what really happened to that plane crash,” Kaliati told Anadolu.

Activist Wonderful Mkhutche told Anadolu that “silence” surrounding the report of the plane crash “has the potential to create conflicts, if not handled properly.”

Moses Kunkuyu, the country’s information minister, contradicted Chakwera in a statement and claimed that the German experts had not yet submitted a written report to the government, but said “they were about to do that.”

“After they had concluded the investigations, the experts shared with us some information verbally, but we are waiting for an official report on what they discovered during the investigations. We are only asking Malawians to exercise patience as we wait for the full report,” Kunkuyu said.

Chilima’s plane went down in the hilly areas of Chikangawa in the northern region of the country, killing him and eight others instantly. Since then, the story of his death has divided public opinion in the southern African nation.