speaker speaks on pp status
To define President Joyce Banda’s People’s Party (PP), or any other party that comes to power in the PP style, as the ruling party, will remain controversial unless there is a definition of that status, the Speaker said in an interview this week.
“From time to time the issue of how a political party becomes a ruling party was on the floor of the House. But the views expressed were more political than legal. I am inclined to believe that we need to exhaustively discuss such a matter at some national forum devoid of vested political interests in spite of what seems to be precedents so far,” said Speaker Henry Chimunthu Banda who also questioned a similar status then conferred on his former party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in 2005 in a slightly similar fashion.
In an exclusive interview with Weekend Nation, Chimunthu Banda (full interview on Guest Spot page and Nation Online), who recently announced his retirement from active politics, was asked to comment on his experience of working with two presidents in succession within a five-year tenure of office.
Leader of government business in Parliament Henry Phoya and Chancellor College constitutional lawyer Mwiza Nkhata called it an anomaly to tag any party a ruling one in Malawi.
Former vice-president Justin Malewezi also argued it is “unconstitutional” to call any party, ruling “because our laws don’t provide for that.”
This was also supported by Chancellor College law associate professor Edge Kanyongolo who said the concept of a ruling party in our current constitutional context has no legal basis.
“In any case, it has no legal significance because there is no legal right, entitlement, obligation or privilege that accrues to any party by virtue of it being the “ruling party” because such concept does not exist in the Constitution. In fact, nowhere in the Constitution does the term “ruling party” appear,” he said.
In the current case, said Kanyongolo, “we can even have an independent President; or a president whose party is a minority in Parliament in which case calling any party a “ruling party” would have no logical or legal basis.”
PP rose to the helm by virtue of having been formed by Banda, then Vice-President, who sprung to State House following the death of Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika – her boss-turned-nemesis – in April last year.
The late Mutharika also resigned from UDF in 2005 during activities to commemorate Anti-Corruption Day and formed his own DPP.
For Phoya, a constitutional conference would be the right forum to deal with the matter once and for all, “but Malawi also needs politicians who should look at things with posterity in mind”.
He blamed the current problems in defining a ruling party in Malawi on the country’s hybrid political system that combines traits of parliamentary and presidential systems.
“On the face of it, everything would appear to be in order, but the problem is with our hybrid system. This wouldn’t exist in a parliamentary system such as in UK where the party with a majority in Parliament forms government on numerical strength,” said Phoya.
According to lawyer Nkhata, “the diction of calling a party ruling is technically an anomaly because at the ballot we don’t vote for a political party in Malawi.”
“It is important for Malawi as is with every country to come together, say every five years to sit down and see whether our Constitution speaks to people’s will,” he said.
In 2004, UDF had 49 MPs while MCP had 67 the rest were divided among Mgwirizano coalition, independents and other parties to fill the 193-member House.
Still UDF was called ruling party because their candidate Mutharika won the presidency with 36 percent out of 3 414 565 votes cast.
Such situations repeated themselves with DPP in 2005 when Mutharika dumped UDF to form DPP, and 2012 when PP entered Parliament via Banda’s ascendancy to the presidency.
Malewezi, who said the parliamentary system would be appropriate for Malawi, suggested that “we should first look at work already done by the Malawi Law Commission on the constitutional review”.
“They looked at many issues most of which have not even come to Cabinet,” he said.
However, the report of the Malawi Law Commission on the review of the Malawi Constitution is also silent on the matter although it mentions ruling party three times without specifics on the need to correct what lawyer Nkhata called anomalous.
Meanwhile, as Parliament’s lifespan ends in March, Chimunthu-Banda said the review and adoption of new standing orders for Parliament is an achievement.
Among others, the new standing orders, which will come into effect after the May 20 elections, have sought to resolve problems that engulfed the Malawi Parliament in determining who should be Leader of Opposition.
“The age old issue of who becomes the Leader of the Opposition has been adequately addressed. The new definition implies that the party in opposition having the greatest numerical strength at any point in time will elect the Leader of the Opposition,” said the Speaker.
Adds rule 35(2) of the standing orders: “Provided that where two or more political parties in opposition have equal number of members: (a) the leaders of those political parties shall jointly convene a caucus to elect the Leader of Opposition (b) following the election of the Leader of Opposition, the successful candidate shall communicate his or her election to the Speaker who shall make an announcement in the Assembly.”
According to the standing orders, the leader of opposition “may only be removed by the party that elected him or her”.
“Provided that where the LO was elected as in rule 35 (2), the opposition side in the Assembly may remove the Leader of Opposition through a caucus of all members of the opposition side in the House.”
This halts a scenario where DPP then influenced the removal of former MCP president John Tembo, replacing him with Abele Kayembe who was the party’s sympathiser.
Tembo reclaimed his seat through the courts and Mutharika appointed Kayembe to the Cabinet.
“Although I will no longer be in Parliament, it is gratifying to note that my successors will not face the same procedural hurdles that I faced while in the chair,” said Chimunthu.
According to Phoya, the new standing orders were a consensus although, he said, “there are people who think this position should only be determined at the beginning of the term of office.”
The standing orders have also provided for a much more rigorous process in the handling of the national budget to get away from the previous rush usually instigated by the government side.
This time around, once the budget is presented by the Minister of Finance, it will be referred to various committees of Parliament for a period 10 working days during which period ministries will have to defend their budget lines.
Again, for the first time, Parliament now has a fully fledged Committee on Government Assurances which is expected to keep Cabinet ministers in check about the assurances made on the floor of the House.
National secretary of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) Chris Chisoni welcomed the development with a pinch of salt.
“Good development considering many challenges our MPs faced in tracking their approved plans. We must however desist from politicising the new stablished committee as we have many good governance instruments that are made dysfunctional due to negative politics,” he noted.
And why Henry Phoya calls PP a ruling party and side with an illegitimate party in parliament. Why allowing it to propose laws for the country as if representing anyone in parliament. Can we say that all laws championed by PP as a governing party are null and void.
Chimunthu is wrong on saying the PP status was the same as that of DPP in 2005. Bingu became a leader of this country and government under a certain party and later Bingu became independent president then later founded his party- DPP. The people who followed him became DPP. He was mandated as he was elected by Malawians at a general election.
DPP as a majority party in parliament (at the time of elections) should have been championing all laws today. DPP should therefore fight for nullification of a laws championed by PP in the name of government bench
It is a fallacy and indeed nonsensical for Chumunthu Banda to be in the forefront condemning the same law he has been embracing. Now that his time is up he wants to show people that he cared all along. Was he not the same person who swept under the carpet most of the legal shortfalls the opposition parties raised? If anything he was the worst Speaker of Parliament Malawi has ever had during the multi-party political dispensation. The most surprising thing was that he worked as if he just came out of a stupor and yet he took an oath to uphold and translate the law unbiased and impartial. He has been a joke all along; no wonder he was badly defeated during the DPP convention because people spoke through the ballot. He has been raping the constitution left, right and centre to satisfy his other Paymaster apart from the Parliament. It is good riddance that he has decided to stop politics after seeing that the kitchen has become too hot. Don’t think of bouncing back because nobody will miss you, take a leaf from Ba Chakuamba. The other Plonker and Nob is Dama Phoya, a qualified “lawyer” who couldn’t advise his fellow cartoons that a political party anywhere in the world must have policies they should follow whenever there is something to be carried out called “MANIFESTO”. The PP is about to go into an election and not even their President knows what policies as a party they are/will pursue. I thought this is the other blind side the Malawi Electoral Commission should be looking into, that parties with no manifesto or their’s is full of distortions should be barred from contesting. We need to have checks and balances in order to have civilized political parties not parties whose sole purpose is to bankrupt the government through criminal intents, lack of social belonging, zero human-rights practices, no grassroots representation etc. we have been taken sixty years backwards with these selfish brutes. Of all the people who took part in this discussion I can only respect Dr. Malewezi. Those are the citizens the country would wish to have.
This year, 2014, we will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of multiparty politics in Malawi. But more importantly, we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of independence. It would be nice if we seriously considered breaking away from both the single-party practices and colonial era practices. As Lecturer Nkhata and Professor Kanyongolo pointed out, the 1995 constitution clearly separates the executive from the legislature. It is surprising that parliament continues to undermine its constitutionally bestowed powers by subjecting itself to the executive. The new speaker after the May elections should call a redefinition of parliament standing orders so that there is simply a majority party (the one with the largest number of MPs) and minority parties. Also, in the interest of pure separation of powers, ministers should resign from parliament (see Mseula High Court ruling). The executive will negotiate with the speaker regarding bringing bills to parliament. We have a good constitution so let’s give it a chance.
This is all trash, kindergarten level intelligence at its best, coming from a failed politician who is hiding his shame in the shadow of retirement from active politics. Chimunthu Banda lost the plot as a speaker, failed to address pertinent issues, wined and dined with PP with hope that he may be considered a running mate but to no avail. PP is not a ruling party by ELECTION of the masses but by ERECTION of the tombstone of Bingu. PP literally has no mandate as a party but it is just winding down the cloak of Bingu’s reign. PP has made such a myopic mess in just under 2 years and to ask for an additional 5 years is a big joke. To be honest, Joyce Banda is dull, uninformed, ignorant, naïve and a short-sighted shallow thinker with no vision, purpose and sense of direction. If u remove the takeaway speeches she gives and ask her to articulate her manifesto, its all about giving cows, goats and selling national assets to buy maize.