PAC writes JB on Parliament meet
The Public Affairs Committee (PAC) has written Malawi President Joyce Banda reminding her about the commitments she made that Parliament would be convened after its legal dissolution on March 20 and before the May 20 Tripartite Elections.
PAC chairperson the Rev Felix Chingota said State House has not responded to the communication, initially sent on April 9 electronically and followed up with a letter hand-delivered to Kamuzu Palace the following day.
PAC All-Inclusive Stakeholders Conference held in February resolved that Parliament should be convened to discuss reports on how billions of kwacha were lost from the government purse and how government facilitated the sale of the presidential jet, among other contentious issues.
Delegates from government at the conference and later the President herself told PAC that Parliament would be convened early April after the March 20 dissolution as provided for in Section 67 of the Constitution.
Chingota said during the interaction with the President in February, which was attended by senior government officials, including the Attorney General, they were assured that the President had the mandate to call for Parliament after dissolution and there was a precedent to that effect.
On the next step if the President does not respond favourably to their reminder, Chingota said PAC believed the President was a person of integrity who would not lie to the nation.
State House press secretary Steve Nhlane said in an interview yesterday that he was aware about the issue that PAC had written the President, but requested that PAC should call the President and discuss the issue.
Former leader of House Henry Phoya has hinted that Parliament would not meet because president would have to ensure that there was a constitutional crisis to be addressed or a national emergency.
This is in contradiction to his earlier statement in which he claimed that apart from discussing pertinent issues such as the Cashgate report, government had a crucial loan authorising bill to table in Parliament before May 20 concerning a national development project.
It is not understandable that the whole country is unable to come up with mechanisms of taking to task a head of state who incidentally is a citizen of the land and very much answerable to the legal system just like anybody else in the village. In actual fact they are required to lead by examples in anything, hence all the perks associated with their work. Malawians will not see their resources misused by unscrupulous individuals and let things go unpunished just like that with hands down without putting up a fight, mainly the disappearance of the Presidential Jet; with the money they plundered is something different but not the whole plane – if it were a vehicle that could be pardoned, not that. Government businesses shouldn’t be managed like personal estates just to satisfy own egocentric life styles sacrificing the poor, deprived, unsuspecting and semi-illiterate Malawians. Definitely someone should be answerable to all this rot and injustices perpetrated to all Malawians, they need to be punished accordingly and money recovered in whatever form.