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| National |
| UDF MPs to align with party |
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by
Joseph Langa, 04 February 2005
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12:13:11
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UDF members of Parliament have agreed to align themselves with the party should President Bingu wa Mutharika be ousted from the party, warning that this will create chaos in Parliament because the party will assume the role of the opposition.
Leader of UDF backbenchers in the House Leonard Mangulama said in an interview most MPs have indicated that they will remain with the party should the National Executive Committee (Nec) go ahead to remove Mutharika from the party.
He warned that the development would create confusion in the House because the UDF will assume the role of the opposition which would make it difficult for the government to control Parliament.
“The opinion of the majority MPs is that they will remain in the party because they were elected on the UDF ticket which also put them in various committees of the House,” said Mangulama.
“That will be suicidal for government because the UDF will be an opposition party. This will create chaos in the House because all the leadership in the House will have to be changed,” he said.
But Mangulama said the MPs are currently not taking sides in the current squabbles between the party and the government and “we are hoping that the situation will not reach a point where the President will be removed from the party”.
He said the MPs wished the President and the party chairman could call them to a meeting so that they could mediate before the issue goes out of hand.
“The current situation is putting us in dilemma because it’s like your mother and father fighting, where do you go? But this is the time that the two should rely on us to mediate,” said Mangulama.
The party’s deputy publicity secretary Mary Kaphwereza Banda confirmed that the party is planning to remove the President from the party because members are bitter with what the President did by cancelling the meeting that the party wanted to have with him.
“I can confirm that issue will be raised because members are now very bitter with him. The feeling among most of them is that he should be removed. They are now feeling more disgruntled and I am personally feeling more ashamed,” she said.
But Leader of the House Yusuf Mwawa said on Thursday although the Nec has powers it will not be proper to abuse their powers by removing the President from the party without consulting the people.
“If there is indeed an intention [to remove him] then the matter should first go to the national conference. On what basis will they remove him? Yes the Nec has powers but they should not abuse them. It will be madness to do that without consulting the people,” he said, conceding that if that happens there will be chaos in the House which will be meeting next month.
Mwawa said his expectation is that the MPs will support government, noting that “this is where we will see the maturity of MPs in transacting their business”.
Speaker Rodwell Munyenyembe could not be drawn to comment on the sitting arrangement in the House should UDF go into opposition because he said he did not want to speculate.
Public Affairs Committee (Pac) chairman Boniface Tamani said at a Press conference in Lilongwe that MPs are supposed to transact their business according to their conscience and that of their constituents and not to align with their parties’ demands or government.
“It’s unfortunate that our democracy is not mature and MPs feel that because they were elected on a party ticket then they should align themselves with the views of the party,” he said.
Malawi Law Society President for the Central Region Chapter Austin Msowoya said the Constitution is silent on what would happen if the President is removed from the party that put him in power.
But he said the UDF will indeed assume the role of the opposition because the President will turn into an independent president without any political affiliation.
He said UDF MPs will have a choice whether to declare themselves independent and sit among their fellow independent MPs or remain in the party as opposition.
“But this is a tricky issue which must be seriously considered during the constitutional review conference because it has never happened before,” said Msowoya.
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