Minister of Information Jappie Mhango and officials from Ministry of Foreign Affairs Monday gave conflicting information regarding the cancellation of a press conference where the two offices were scheduled to address the media on reports that President Peter Mutharika is sidelining his Vice, Saulos Chilima.<\/p>\n
Both Mhango and Minister of Foreign Affairs George Chaponda were expected to address the media in Lilongwe.<\/p>\n
Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, Quent Kalichero, while acknowledging that the briefing indeed was scheduled to take place at Capital Hill, said it was cancelled but was not able to divulge the reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just told by the Principal Secretary, Dalitso Kabambe, that the briefing had been cancelled. That\u2019s all I can say,\u201d said Kalichero in an interview yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n
However, Mhango whose Ministry sent out invitations to media houses for the briefing, expressed ignorance on the issue.<\/p>\n
Said Mhango: \u201cI am hearing about this from you. I am not aware that there was such a briefing. How can people organise such a press conference without the knowledge of my office,\u201d queried Mhango.<\/p>\n
But when it was put to him that the invitation came from his Ministry, Mhango insisted that he was not informed and, therefore, such a briefing could not take place.<\/p>\n
A leaked press release from Foreign Affairs which was expected to be read out during the briefing states that \u201cthe responsibilities and domain of<\/p>\n
Foreign Ministers world over lie in foreign and international relations, hence their constant presence in foreign\u2013related engagements\u201d.<\/p>\n
Reads the statement in part: \u201cIt must be recalled that when President Peter Mutharika appointed a lean Cabinet, he consequently assigned specific mandates and portfolios to his office, and indeed that of the Vice President. In the case of the VP, he also doubles as Minister responsible for Disaster and Relief Management, National Public Events and Chairperson of the Civil Service Reform Commission.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Vice President is doing a commendable job in these portfolios which in themselves are quite demanding, especially considering the difficult situation the country is going through in the area of household food availability.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malawi News <\/em>edition of 19- 25 December 2015 carried an article titled \u2018APM faulted on VP Chilima\u2019 in which Mutharika is being faulted on his tendency to delegate Cabinet ministers to official functions at the expense of Chilima.<\/p>\n In the article, Mhango is quoted as saying that Mutharika delegates line ministers to attend events related to their ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Minister of Information Jappie Mhango and officials from Ministry of Foreign Affairs Monday gave conflicting information regarding the cancellation of a press conference where the two offices were scheduled to address the media on reports that President Peter Mutharika is sidelining his Vice, Saulos Chilima. Both Mhango and Minister of Foreign Affairs George Chaponda were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14881,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14879\/revisions\/14881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}