Kasaila was reacting to Joyce Banda’s strong-worded press statement issued on Sunday, in reaction to her implication into cashgate by a convict Triza Namathanga Senzani.
Mrs. Senzani had alleged in court that Joyce Banda had iinstructed cabinet ministers to steal millions of Kwacha from their respective ministries to finance the People’s Party (PP) 2014 elections campaign.
Among others, Banda said in the statement, she was not surprised by Mrs. Senzani’s allegations, claiming she has received information from several serving senior civil servants that they are also being pressurized by the DPP government of President Peter Mutharika to implicate her and former members of her cabinet in cashgate in the same manner Mrs. Senzani has done.
Said Joyce Banda: “I wish to inform Malawians without fear of contradiction that all these attempts to tarnish my name and legacy are the work of President Peter Mutharika personally and the DPP government. It is unfortunate that as a lawyer he does not realize that it is immoral to abuse his immunity from prosecution by scandalizing my name.
I would have wished I met him in court so he can prove my guilt to the entire world.”
Banda further called on President Peter Mutharika to explain on why the founding DPP leader, Bingu wa Mutharika, settled for him, in the succession plan, even after the late Mutharika had promised, at a political rally, that she will have statehouse keys after his retirement in 2014.
But in an interview with a local radio station on Monday, Kasaila said Joyce Banda should not forget the fact that cashgate suspects started talking about her involvement in the wanton plunder of public resources at Capital Hill, long before she lost the 2014 elections.
“It’s unfortunate that the former president is trying to bring the DPP into the issues that has nothing to do with the DPP. Mentioning her connection in cashgate started when she was the president. We heard some suspects that were connected to cashgate talking about her being involved and this is not news to us. For her to start linking issues related to cashgate which happened during her term is far unfortunate and uncalled for.
On the succession fallout, Kasaila said: “We would like also to say that she seem to be complaining that at one point there was bad blood between herself and our former president late Bingu wa Mtharika and she is insisting on implicating the fallout between her and our former boss to our current president.
But the fact is; she became the president of this country and she lost elections to our current president Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika therefore, I think it will do her better not to concentrate on what happened that time and look at what happened for her to lose elections miserably. A ruling party being third on the line of those that won the elections was really a disgrace.
“At the same time, we would like to remind her that she was a member of the DPP which means if there was cashgate in DPP, she was party to that and if she was not party to that she could have acted two years that she was the president not now. Coming clean as if she was not aware of what happened, if indeed something happened is a non-starter. She was a vice president, a senior cabinet minister and a high ranking official of DPP she therefore know more about what happened in DPP than anyone else, ”
Joyce Banda has been living a self-imposed exile since losing power to Mutharika in 2014.
Apart from Mrs. Senzani, other cashgate suspects that has dragged Joyce Banda into the infamous theft are Osward Lutepo, who, ironically, was head of resource mobilization in the Peoples Party (PP).
