Malawi impeachment row grows
2005-10-11 21:32
Blantyre - Malawi's parliament opened on Tuesday amid uncertainty about opposition plans to revive a controversial debate whether or not to impeach President Bingu wa Mutharika for constitutional offences.
Clerk of parliament Roosevelt Gondwe said: "I have not received any communication on the procedures for impeachment process," but added that the legal affairs committee was discussing the issue.
"The matter is with the legal affairs committee... they are still discussing it. It has yet to come to me and I don't know in what form the procedures will come," he said.
Critics accuse Mutharika of repeatedly flouting the constitution by summarily sacking senior government officials.
They claim, too, he "misused public funds and resources for partisan and private causes to support his Democratic Progressive Party".
Pushing for charges
But the impeachment moves started after Mutharika fell out with his estranged mentor and predecessor, Bakili Muluzi, and founded his own political party after he was elected to power when Muluzi's decade-long rule ended in May 2004.
Muluzi's United Democratic Front party which has garnered enough support from other opposition members of parliament to form a two-thirds majority, is pushing for Mutharika to be charged.
The 193-member parliament started a debate in June on Mutharika's possible impeachment, but it was halted when the then-speaker Rodwell Munyenyembe collapsed as he tried to control the heated discussion.
Munyenyembe died of cardiac arrest in a South African hospital four days later.
Pandemonium again broke in the chambers when an opposition MP presented a committee report that stated the debate on impeachment should proceeed.
Team of lawyers working on it
Parliament was forced to postpone the revival of the debate after electricity was cut during the session, which the opposition charged was a deliberate delaying tactic.
Maxwell Milanzi, an MP for Muluzi's UDF party, said: "We have serious grounds for impeaching Mutharika ... our focus is on impeachment procedures."
Milanzi, who filed the first notice for a motion to impeach Mutharika, said a team of lawyers had prepared eight "serious grounds" for impeachment.
- SAPA