Kalilani thrown out of House

First Deputy Speaker of the Malawi National Assembly Jones Chingola on Thursday temporarily threw out Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) secretary general Jean Kalilani for coming into the House wearing a scalf with her party’s symbols.

First to note Kalilani’s dressing was government Chief Whip Ephraim Chiume who notified Chingola.

Chingola then asked Kalilani to come back into the House after tea-break dressed properly.

But the ruling did not please the government side and resulted in ministers refusing to answer any more questions until the Dowa Central legislator was chased out of the House.

It was at this point that Chingola reversed his earlier ruling and asked Kalilani to go out of the House and come back after tea-break.

However, Kalilani did not take the deputy Speaker’s change of heart kindly and refused to go out, questioning why he has to change his ruling.

Chingola then revoked Section 103 of the Standing Orders and threw Kalilani out, advising her to come back at 2 pm.

Kalilani was escorted out of the House by the party’s leader in the House George Chaponda.

In an interview outside the House, Kalilani, said since she was feeling cold, she just picked something to cover herself without really thinking much about it.

After the incident, DPP made attempts to have also some women MPs from the government side been thrown out for wearing on orange colours, but their attempts were unsuccessful. In the afternoon, Kalilani came back into the House donning an all-blue scalf.