Prof Chirwa: The Attorney General has no authority to terminate government contracts. The office can advise, but it’s a party to the contract that can terminate
PRETORIA-(MaraviPost)-One of the country’s renown Law of Professors, Danwood Chirwa says Malawi Attorney General Thabo Chakaka Nyirenda has no mandate to terminate government contracts.
Professor Chirwa writes:
The weekend is private time. Plus I said we’ve lost the game already. This is my last post on this ‘regime’. The answers to the questions are:
The Attorney General has no authority to terminate government contracts. The office can advise, but it’s a party to the contract that can terminate.
There’s no amnesty law in Malawi and as such the Attorney General has no legal authority to issue amnesty from criminal prosecution. There is no precedence for it and such a practice won’t start now. There can be no justification for such a law, in any case. It would empower the Attorney General to act like God in a democratic state where equality before the law is sacrosanct.
The Attorney General has no legal authority in criminal matters, both investigations and prosecutions. The office can issue general directions to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Director of the ACB, but it cannot usurp the powers of the DPP or the ACB Director. So the press statement is simply unlawful.
Lastly, the press statement amounts to unlawful interference by the Attorney General with the independence of the DPP and the ACB Director. The DPP and the ACB must continue with their work free from influence.
President Lazarus Chakwera won historic elections last year
The excitement that preceded and followed the historic fresh presidential election on June 23 last year in the Southern African country of Malawi is vanishing at a supersonic speed. To have fresh election, people had to protest across the country and often times, the demonstrations, led by ‘human rights activist’ who is now the cabinet minister in the new administration, turned violent.
The protests, which started as a reaction to the 2019 election results, slowly gained momentum and proved to be nothing but a conspiracy to dethrone the then ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Yes! DPP was evil and people would not want it in government any time soon. They plundered government resources without mercy and on 23 June people did the needful. A good riddance, it was.
Now Malawi has a new president, in the name of Reverend Lazarus Chakwera. Some might question the rationale of replacing an international legal scholar (Peter Mutharika) with a Reverend, but this is the same Reverend who emerged as leader of the Malawi Congress Party in 2013 without having any previous political experience after heading the Malawi Assemblies of God, one of the largest Christian denominations in the country.
Speaking in a style and accent that had hints of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King during the inauguration ceremony, President Chakwera talked about the dream “that binds us together [which] is for us to enjoy shared prosperity, not just freedom”.
But he then said it was no good just having a dream.
“The time has come for us to go beyond dreaming.
“We all must wake up because this is a time to arise from slumber and make our dream come true.”
Have Malawians gotten what they expected of the current Chakwera regime?
Going by the phrase by French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, “the more things change, the more they remain the same (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose),” the change of government hasn’t addressed grievances of Malawians but rather cementing the status quo: corruption, nepotism, tribalism and executive arrogance still remain pillars of the ruling political party.
Just six months after Chakwera assumed the office of the President, K6.2 billion has already vanished into thin air. The controlling officers are busy now soliciting signatures from ‘idiots’, masquerading as civil servants to back up their financial reports. These are officers who were sent back to collect the errors in their reports. Yes! The President ordered them to go and clean the reports (mukakoze momwe mukuwoneka kuti ndalama sizinayende bwinomo kuti tisayikane mmavuto).
Still, there a good number of people who believe that President must be given time and that what is happening has no blessings from his office. This kind of thinking is weird and against the wind of progress that has been ignited by the likes of Stanly Onjezani Kenani and Idriss Alli Nasah. The President is the Head of State and if things are happening without his knowledge, then he is sleeping on duty, which is very unfortunate because we pay him handsomely.
Following incessant calls for expenditure reports of the K6.2 billion from Idriss Ali Nassah, which President told the nation it served the intended purpose by giving us allocations, the responsible officer are under panic. We are now hearing reports that the President is inending to constitute a commission of enquiry into the “criminal pillage.”
“I have just gotten off the phone with a senior advisor to the president, who told me that His Excellency is as disgusted and angry at what he has seen, as many of you are. And rightly so. He told me that His Excellency is soon to constitute a Commission of Inquiry into this criminal pillage, to get to the bottom of this COVIDGATE.
“I told him that I didn’t think it was a good idea, because it will be seen as an attempt to dodge and a dive. Our history with Commissions of Inquiry traumatic [sic]. They are a waste of time and money; they are a way of bluffing out of situations by pretending to be doing something when actually nothing is eventually done. Anything refereed to a Commission of Inquiry almost always dies a natural death.
“People died, I told him. People that we know, people that he knows. People that the president knows. This is time to bite ferociously, not to bark endlessly. I doubt he heard me at all because he seemed convinced that this matter can only be resolved by a Commission of Inquiry,” argued Nassah in a facebook post.
On the other hand Malawian born but South Africa based law expert, Professor Danwood Chirwa, thinks that Chakwera is inept and is thriving on blind loyalty and ignorance from Malawians
“Malawians are riding the tide of misplaced outrage once again, which is itself outrageous. Party functionaries, in a bid to divert attention from the real culprit, who is one and at the top, have invaded social media spaces with wild accusations against civil servants as if they’re the ones who approve budgets and direct where money must be spent.
“The reality is that Dr Chakwera has shown time and time again that he lacks the ability to lead Malawi and end corruption. He installed a government that critics called ‘incenstious’, excluded women and included crooks. He later made controversial appointments, including a bloated coterie of advisors and to statutory entities that also excluded women and violated statutory provisions.
“About the pandemic, there’s ample evidence proving that the President is singularly responsible for the failure to contain the virus and for using the pandemic to line up the pockets of his party and patronage networks,” wrote Chirwa on his facebook page.
He added: “Let Malawians not fool themselves. You have a government led by a man who is deeply flawed. He has no leadership skills. He has no vision. He has no ambition. He has no standards. He offers nothing but empty talk. He’s presiding over a criminal enterprise — like his predecessors.”
Another facebook user, Sunduzwayo Jere is of the view that civil service needs an overhaul if Malawi is to deal with corruption once and for all.
“From past President Dr Bakili Muluzi to the current President HE Dr Lazarus Chakwera, ruling parties have changed. The cabinet has changed, the members of parliament have changed but the civil service has not changed.
“It is the first constant in the equation across all democratic governments and that is the bedrock of corruption in Malawi. Dismantle it and change it’s structure, you will achieve the change that our people seek. Tribalism too has led to the pain and agony of many deserving Malawians while the chosen few feast on the loot,” said Jere.
The country’s rights body, Centre for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives (CDEDI) has also challenged President Lazarus Chakwera to clear himself on allegations that he is entrenching nepotism, corruption and bribery in his leadership.
CDEDI executive director Sylvester Namiwa said it is clear from the lamentations of a group of some members of the Tonse Alliance lead partner, Malawi Congress Party (MCP), that something is amiss in the Chakwera administration.
Apparently, the grouping, which has been christened Second Liberation of the Malawi Nation (SLMN), is accusing the President of demonstrating nepotistic tendencies after it was made known that Chakwera is employing his relatives and cronies from the Assemblies of God Church where he belongs and has been a pastor for years before joining politics.
The grouping further alleges that the Secretary to the President and Cabinet (SPC), Zangazanga Chikhos, is playing some underhand tactics in frustrating the Tonse Alliance agenda by recalling and rewarding his friends to take up jobs in the civil service.
Namiwa, through a statement issued on Saturday, February 13, 2021 described the development as disturbing, especially coming at a time Malawians are grappling to come to terms with another revelation that some Controlling Officers are failing to account for MK6.2 million Covid-19 funds.
“The social media is currently awash with issues ranging from the disturbing news about the alleged mismanagement of the K6.2 billion that was meant for the Covid-19 response, to the Tonse Alliance’s loss of direction in terms of its commitment to honour their campaign promises that were contained in their consolidated manifesto.
“As if this was not enough, Malawians of good will may recall CDEDI’s recent petition to President Dr. Lazarus Chakwera, which contained, among other things his administration’s growing tendencies of nepotism and his appetite of hiring retired civil servants, leaving in the cold the current crop of experienced and energetic civil servants at the Capital Hill who deserve promotions, thereby creating vacancies for more young people to join the civil service,” read the statement in part.
Namiwa emphasized that by coming out in the open with their true identities, the MCP pressure group agrees with what CDEDI has always stood for, that Malawians were sold a dummy on June 23, 2020 when they voted the Tonse Alliance partners into office, on trust that they would execute their campaign manifesto, which contained a lot of sugar-coated promises.
Prior to every presidential election in Malawi, all candidates exude a smoke of hope. But usually, whoever gets the mandate to control the public pulse on behalf of Malawians immediately becomes intoxicated with power and the trend continues.
The aspirants make too much of the people before election, and, if successful, too much of themselves after it. That is the more reason we welcome any new face in politics with joy and much expectations, as we are a desperate for better leadership, and Malawians just did exactly that with Lazarus Chakwera. We all looked upon him as a saviour.
Malawi’s parastatal boards’ appointments early September: last hope for sidelined Eastern Region MCP officials
Written by David Phiri
Lazarus Chakwera is failing to unify the divided country as he pursues a blatant agenda of purging Southerners, writes legal expert
President Lazarus Chakwera came to power through an alliance of nine parties called Tonse — meaning “all of us”. The name of the alliance gave an impression of inclusivity but before the ink had dried it became evident that little had substantively changed in Malawi.
The alliance, which had accused former president Peter Mutharika of nepotism and promised to deal with it decisively, immediately committed similar transgressions. Barely two weeks into office, Chakwera announced his cabinet and it was conspicuously dominated by people from his region, with his home district of Lilongwe getting a lion’s share.
The backlash was instant but proved ineffectual as Chakwera defended his picks. Commentators such as Danwood Chirwa, a professor of law at the University of Cape Town, argued that the appointments were a form of political patronage. Those who voted, expecting a radical departure from the ills of the Mutharika administration, were in for a rude awakening. However, few have borne the brunt of the new administration’s duplicity as the southern region’s technocrats.
Though Chakwera had evoked the spirit of inclusivity through the “Tonse” mantra, he has since made it evident that those hailing from the south, which is the opposition Democratic Progressive Party stronghold, has no seat at his administration’s table. Heads have rolled in a purge that has seen Southerners being axed. For instance, Dalitso Kabambe, a reserve bank governor under whose watch Malawi’s currency performed well against major currencies, was sacked. He hails from the south and was replaced by Wilson Banda who comes from the same region as Chakwera.
In three key ministries, a significant degree of institutional memory was obliterated with the firing of three permanent secretaries — Joseph Mwandidya for the ministry of energy, Harry Kanjwe for home affairs, and Wilson Moleni for land affairs — who coincidentally comes from the south.
At the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA), Chakwera discarded all pretence of impartiality going so far as to overreach and abuse his power as he canned the commissioner-general of the tax body Tom Malata along with his deputy Roza Mbilizi. They both hail from the south.
Without any subtlety, the replacements were from the regions that gave Chakwera votes. Though the mandate to hire or fire for those positions does not rest with the president, Chakwera arbitrarily declared that the appointments he had made for these positions were solely in an acting capacity. For those he has not fired who come from the south, he has redeployed to obscure government offices, which are considered in Malawi as “the Guantánamo bay of the civil service”.
Admittedly, Chakwera reserves the right to bring into service those whom he trusts to execute his agenda, however it is the selective firing that has raised concerns. The fact that most victims of the Chakwera purge come from the southern region has not gone unnoticed. The discriminatory dismissals that Chakwera has pursued since taking up office risk further fragmenting the nation and could threaten peace and stability in the long run.
In the run up to the June 2020 election that ushered Chakwera into power, Malawi’s geographic divisions were exacerbated and exploited by politicians as ethnic tensions heightened. Chakwera was backed by the central region where he comes from and is the traditional base of his Malawi Congress Party (MCP), as well as the northern region where his running mate, Salous Chilima, enjoyed significant support. Mutharika was backed by the southern region. There is undeniably a politics of vengeance at play and it belies Chakwera’s earlier promise to ensure meritocratic appointments in government and state-owned enterprises.
Chakwera now runs the risk of further alienating Southerners given that Malawi’s political leaders are cognisant of the regional fractures and simmering ethnic tensions that became more pronounced during the June 2020.
For instance, Chakwera supporters attacked, maimed and intimidated Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) monitors in parts of the central region. However, Mutharika did not seek any recourse nor did the electoral commission follow up on these incidents. In essence, Mutharika accepted an outcome of an election that was of a lesser quality than the one the courts had nullified.
In his last speech as president, Mutharika called upon his supporters to accept the outcome, ensuring calm prevailed in what was then a volatile atmosphere. Chakwera was a direct beneficiary of Mutharika’s final demonstration of mature and democratic leadership because it allowed for a peaceful and smooth transfer of power.
Despite a peaceful transition facilitated by his predecessor, Chakwera is failing to pursue a path of unifying the nation and bridging the divide, as he pursues a blatant agenda of southern region exclusion. Perhaps the “Tonse” mantra was a mere gimmick, after all?
About the author: David Phiriis a legal expert based in Geneva, and can be reached at feedback@davidphiri.com.
(MaraviPost): Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development Goodall Gondwe on Wednesday partly blamed low Diaspora remittances to the country as deterring transformation and self-reliance in Malawi. Many in the Diaspora that have tried for years to Engage the Malawi Government on this issue for years agree on the low remittances, however they put all the blame on the Malawi Government for refusing to engage the Diaspora in a meaningful way.
Commenting on the Maravi Post story where the Minister made these assertions, a person who has been a champion of Diaspora engagement with the Malawi government noted that Malawi Government has refused to engage the Malawi Diaspora to come up with programmes that would encourage financial and human investments.
