Anti-Bakili Muluzi / MALAWI POLITICS TODAY

Bingu not tensed up
BY Gedion Munthali
09:52:20 - 25 June 2007

President Bingu wa Mutharika is “too strong” to be tensed up with the eventualities of the Supreme Court ruling on Section 65 of the Constitution.

Justice Minister Henry Phoya was asked to comment on how the President was feeling in the wake of the court’s ruling and the threat that his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) might lose seats in the House.

“The President is fine and good. We have a very strong President,” said Phoya during a press briefing in Lilongwe on Friday.

Is he not tensed up?

“Why should he be tensed up? He is not losing sleep over it. He is a very strong character. After all, he still continues to enjoy the position of authority,” said
Phoya.

“The government has not collapsed and will not collapse. The two arms of government, the executive and the judiciary are intact. This madness only concerns one arm of government, the legislature.”

Since the appeals court ruling, different political parties in the House have petitioned Speaker of the National Assembly Louis Chimango to declare vacant seats of MPs deemed to have crossed the floor.

MCP wants Ted Kalebe, Binton Kutsaira and Kate Kainja-Kaluluma evicted from the House.

The crime the three committed, according to the party, is that they joined Mutharika’s cabinet without the MCP’s consent.

Since then, the party claims, they stopped performing the party’s functions and attending its meetings.

Incidentally, Kainja-Kaluluma provided the party with more ammunition when she announced last month that she had joined DPP.

MCP and DPP are both represented in the National Assembly.

UDF wants 37 MPs who left the party and joined the DPP to lose their seats.

The DPP wants 47 MPs including Speaker Louis Chimango and his deputy Esther Nkhoma to be evicted for either joining associations whose objectives are political in nature or moving from the government side to the opposition side.

Republican Party (RP) wants its former MPs to lose their seats for joining the DPP.