The High Court of Malawi has dismissed an application by three concerned citizens who sought to stop President Peter Mutharika’s directive for the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to relocate its headquarters from Lilongwe to Blantyre.
Delivering his judgement in Lilongwe yesterday, Judge Kenyatta Nyirenda said the three—Limbani Phiri, Vanwyk Chikasanda and Beauty Kumtomoni—failed to prove that they had interest in the matter or how they will suffer following the decision.
| Joseph Mwale
The judge also said the trio commenced the case on wrong footing.
Said Nyirenda: “The burden rests on the claimants to show that they have locus standi. Have they demonstrated that they have locus standi to the standard set out in Legal Costs Case and the Longwe Case? I do not think so.
“In the present application, the claimants have not demonstrated a legal or substantial right which is over and above that which the general public may have in the subject matter under consideration.”
The judge also took a swipe at the claimants regarding the manner they commenced their action, calling it stillborn and failing from the start.
He said: “The long and short of it is that it would be contrary to public policy and an abuse of process of the court to permit the claimants seeking to establish that the decision of the defendant in issuing the Executive order to which they were entitled to protection under public law, to proceed by way of an ordinary action and, by this means, to evade the provisions of Order 19, rule 20, of the CPR [Criminal Procedure Rules].”
In their application, the three argued that Mutharika’s directive is unconstitutional and unlawful having been made in clear violation of the law and that the concept of ‘Executive Order’ is alien to the obtaining constitutional dispensation in Malawi.
Attorney General Frank Mbeta, in an interview yesterday, said the ruling sets a tone on locus standi.
He said: “The ruling resets the tone of the law that busy bodies will not be tolerated to litigate in our courts on matters which do not have any bearing on their personal rights or interests. The court has refused to grant an injunction against MEC relocation.”
There was no immediate reaction from the applicants as we went to press last evening.
On February 27 2026, the High Court dismissed MEC’s application for a judicial review to get clarification on whether the order to relocate its head office constituted unlawful interference with its independence.
The President in October last year ordered MEC to relocate to Blantyre alongside Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority and Malawi Housing Corporation. The order also commanded Malawi Prisons Service to revert its headquarters to the old capital in Zomba. The other three have since complied.
