Kunkuyu’s miss-mash of contradictions
Vi ce-Presi dent Saulos Chil ima was in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, yesterday, representing Malawi at the 60th Anniversary of the Union Day for that country. It is the first time the Veep has traveled outside the country on official duties since President Lazarus Chakwera withheld delegated powers to his vice on June 21 2022.
Chilima’s last trip outside the country was on April 22, 2022 to the United States of America where he went to attend that year’s UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) meeting. Incidentally, the US trip came at a time President Chakwera was also in Mozambique. So both the President and his vice were outside the country at the same time. The debate that time was ‘Who was in charge in the country with both Chakwera and Chilima away?’ But that is now water under the bridge. We have moved on.
The President announced in a national address that he had withheld delegated powers to his vice, waiting for the country’s graft-busting body, the Anti-Corruption Bureau, to substantiate its allegations against him. Chakwera’s move followed Chilima’s implication in United Kingdom-based businessperson Zuneth Sattar’s business deals with the Malawi government.
What has prompted this entry today is not the President’s seemingl y silent withdrawal of his decision against Chilima, but the desperate attempt by Minister of Information Moses Kunkuyu to justify the move. In a statement on the same on Tuesday this week, the minister went out of his way to explain the reasons for the President’s move. Unfortunately, the justification was nothing more than a miss-mash of contradictions. And so, I am afraid, it miserably fell flat on its belly.
Kunkuyu, whom I should declare, is a humble and jovial person, and a friend, is usually very eloquent and articulate in his engagement with the public. He also never shies away from the media. If he doesn’t have anything to say to an inquiry he will say so and ask for time to check with those who may have the information being sought
All in all, he is a jolly good person. But in the Tuesday statement he says one thing in one sentence and then goes right back to negate the same in the next statement in a manner that ends up confusing himself.
The first question is: Is the President’s about-turn on withholding of delegated powers to his vice mean ACB has failed to substantiate its allegations against the Vice-
sit with the President’s decision to continue to withhold ministerial portfolios from the Vice-President or indeed with the withholding of delegated responsibilities to the Veep? It surely contradicts the principle of presumption of innocence unless …
It is also a contradiction of sorts that it has taken the President two years to reinstate delegation of foreign duties to the Vice President which he withheld two years ago and which he publicly announced.
According to Kunkuyu, the President withdrew the delegated responsibilities from the Vice-President as Minister Responsible for Public Sector Reforms “to allow for independent court processes regarding his case to proceed in the Judiciary without any political interference from the ministerial office the Vice-President held in the Executive”.
For one thing, the Vice- President’s case is far from being concluded, if at all it will ever be before Christ’s second coming.
Then Kunkuyu goes on to allege that the President has maintained a cordial working relationship with the Vice-President. Which work? The same delegated work which the President withheld? But don’t we already know that the Vice-President’s office operates through delegation from the President?
What the minister is simply saying is that what the President took from his vice with one hand, he immediately gave back to him with the other hand.
In short, there was no withholding of delegation of powers—except for the ministerial position—since the President regularly “included his vice in all Cabinet meetings and other meetings with him to regularly to discuss matters of State …” Whereupon Kunkuyu takes us back to where he started that “by continuing to withhold ministerial portfolios from the Vice-President, the President remains committed to a practice of non-interference in the functions of the Judiciary by the Executive branch as prescribed by law”, a move which once again negates the principle of the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise in a fair trial befall an independent court of law.
That was much ado about nothing
