Debate ensues on VP’s status

Debate has ensued on the status of President Lazarus Chakwera’s withholding of delegated powers to Vice-President Saulos Chilima after dispatching him to represent the country at the 60th Anniversary of the Union Day for Tanzania.

The decision comes two years after the President, in a June 2022 national address, announced the withholding of “any delegated duties while waiting for the [Anti-Corruption] Bureau to substantiate its allegations against him and to make known its course of action about such”.

In separate interviews on Tuesday, political and legal analysts said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s announcement meant that the President had silently withdrawn his decision that followed Chilima’s alleged implication in United Kingdom-based businessperson Zuneth Sattar’s business deals with the Malawi Government.

Presidential press secretary Anthony Kasunda referred questions on the President’s position to Minister of Information and Digitisation Moses Kunkuyu who said people should not read too much into the developments.

He said when the President withdrew all delegated duties from the Vice-President as Minister Responsible for Public Sector Reforms, he wanted his case to proceed in the Judiciary without any political interference from the ministerial office the Veep held in the Executive.

Said Kunkuyu: “The President has nonetheless maintained a cordial working relationship with the Vice-President. This cordial relationship has involved the President’s regular practice of including the Vice-President in all Cabinet meetings.

“[He] has been meeting with him regularly to discuss matters of State, including him in the inspection of infrastructural projects, attending public presidential functions and political rallies with him, co-leading a recent Cabinet Retreat with him and now also includes delegating him to represent the President at some foreign events to which His Excellency has been invited.”

He said by continuing to withhold ministerial portfolios from the Vice-President, the President remained committed to a policy of non-interference in the functions of the Judiciary by the Executive branch as prescribed by law.

“At the same time, by continuing to maintain a cordial working relationship with the Vice-President, the President also remains committed to the practice of treating the Vice-President as someone the Constitution presumes to be innocent until proven otherwise by a fair trial before an independent court of law,” said Kunkuyu.

But in an interview on Tuesday, former Attorney General Charles Mhango said Chakwera’s change of heart is telling about the President’s “usual inconsistency” in decision-making even on key matters of the State.

He said: “The President openly and publicly declared that he had withdrawn all delegated powers from the Vice-President. The action now means he has silently withdrawn his decision.

“However, the President should have been kind enough to Malawians by making a public statement that he has now reviewed his withdrawal and that he will, henceforth, be allowing the Vice-President to perform delegated powers of the Office of the President.”

However, another legal mind, Michael Goba-Chipeta said there was nothing legal to interpret or infer on the matter because the President was still within his powers to delegate or not.

“If he decides not to delegate like he did, it’s within his power, and if now he has decided to delegate, he flouts no law. It’s a delegation, it has been made, and it’s within the law,” he said.

When contacted on Tuesday, Malawi Law Society president Patrick Mpaka referred The Nation to a June 2022 statement in which the society said only those functions directly assigned by the President would be affected.

Reads the statement: “The announcement by the President, if implemented, entails that possibly the President may not be seeking further assistance or conferring any further functions to the Vice-President until the corruption allegations on the part of the Vice-President are resolved.”

On the other hand, governance analyst George Chaima argued that the decision on Chilima’s role was made in a hurry and that the recent trend of delegating the VP locally entails a sign of remorse to amend “a sour and savoured relationship”.

“The delegation is a silent way of saying the withheld delegated powers have now been withdrawn.  It shows that Chakwera has made a final decision to delegate his power so that there is a good working relationship up to the 2025 polls,” he said.

Governance and public expenditure tracking expert Mavuto Bamusi also said the President’s action implied a silent amnesty on Chilima.

Chilima was arrested in November 2022 after being named among 84 individuals suspected to have received bribes from Sattar, according to a report the ACB submitted to the President in 2022. His case is currently in court.