Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika says he refuses to forgive two journalists who wrote that he was afraid of ghosts and that they will have to defend themselves in court, state television reported on Friday.
”It was a total lie designed to destroy my character … that’s why I will not forgive them,” Mutharika told a rally in the administrative capital Lilongwe on Thursday.
”The journalists have said they will stand by their story,” he said.
”So let the courts decide and the law take its course.”
Raphael Tenthani, who works for the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Mabvuto Banda, a journalist for The Nation newspaper who also reports for the Reuters news agency, were arrested and charged with publishing false information on March 15 for reporting that Mutharika had moved out of a newly-built palace because he believed it was haunted.
The journalists, who face charges of ”causing ridicule to the president” have been released on bail.
This is the first time that journalists have been arrested since the 71-year-old-economist-turned-president controversially won elections in May 2004.
Human rights groups and the local media have criticised Mutharika for the arrests.
The journalists quoted an aide to Mutharika last month as saying that the president had abandoned the $100-million palace in Lilongwe because he had been hearing
”strange noises that keep him awake or feels rodents crawling all over his body but when he turns on the lights, he sees nothing”.
”It’s true that the president is no longer staying there and we have asked clerics from several Christian churches including the Roman Catholic to pray for the new state house to exorcise evil spirits,” said Reverend Malani Mtonga, who is the president’s advisor on religious affairs.
Mutharika angrily denied the reports, saying: ”I have never feared ghosts in my life.”
The palace, containing about 300 air-conditioned rooms and set in 555ha of land outside the capital, is widely seen as a folly of the country’s founding president Kamuzu Banda.
Muthariza’s predecessor Bakili Muluzi refused to live in the palace, saying it was too extravagant.
Until last year the building housed the Parliament but Mutharika told the lawmakers to move, saying it was intended to be a residence and should ”revert to its original proper use”. – Sapa-AFP