Government warns DCs against council elections

Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has warned all district commissioners and chief executive officer for Mangochi Town Council against conducting council chairpersons and vice chairpersons’ elections sooner or later than August this year.

Some district councils, including Blantyre, held the elections last week.

In a circular that he signed on Friday, Secretary for Local Government and Rural Development Stuart Ligomeka reminded the district commissioners, the chief executive officer for Mangochi and Malawi Local Government Association (Malga) that last year’s elections were delayed following an injunction that Malga president Samson Chaziya obtained.

Legislated calendar for Council leadership was disturbed after Chaziya obtained the injunction in protest against the Local Government (Amendment) Act of 2010 which reduced the city mayors’ and district council chairpersons’ tenure to two and half years and one year respectively.

“In view of the foregoing, the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development wishes to advise all councils addressed above that, in order to accord chairpersons and vice chairperson elected after vacation of court injunction the full term of office, elections of the next chairpersons and vice chairpersons fall on the same day as last year.

“Conducting such elections sooner or later than the date specified would be ultiravires against the current legal provision which limits tenure of office for the portfolios in question to one year,” Ligomeka said.

The circular further says the ministry realises that some chairpersons and vice chairpersons have now served their maximum period of two terms in those positions as provided for in the Act of 2010.

“This entails that they are no longer eligible to contest for the same positions at any point within the 5-year period of their being councillors. This provision, however, does not bar chairpersons or vice chairpersons, respectively, with exhausted term limits, from contesting for other council positions in which they have not served for a maximum period,” the circular reads.