Government on Wednesday assured members of Parliament (MPs) that their rights and privileges will always be upheld during sittings.<\/p>\n
The assurance follows the discontinuation of proceedings by the Speaker Richard Msowoya on Tuesday after the arrest of two prominent opposition MPs Peter Chankhwantha and Jessie Kabwila on suspected treason charges.<\/p>\n
Msowoya told the House that the Business Committee meeting yesterday morning had compelled government to guarantee security of members while Parliament is meeting.<\/p>\n
Leader of the House, Francis Kasaila, confirmed about the meeting and assured fellow parliamentarians that government will no longer breach security and privileges legislators are supposed to enjoy during the period when Parliament is meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI must say it was unfortunate that proper procedure was not followed in the arrest of the two BY BONIFACE PHIRI honourable members. From now on, government is assuring this House that all privileges stipulated in the Act will no longer be violated,\u201d Kasaila said.<\/p>\n
Leader of the Opposition, Lazarus Chakwera, also confirmed the stand taken by the Business Committee stating that it was done in the best interest of the nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have also agreed that the motion put on the floor by the honourable member from Lilongwe North East (Maxwell Thyolera) to have the issue of privileges debated by the House be disregarded. However, I must ask government to gi by what they have promised,\u201d Chakwera said.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the development Thyolera asked government to adhere to the commitment made.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy worry in raising the motion was because I felt the government\u2019s action (through the police) made us look like dangerous criminals. Mounting a roadblock at the entrance to Parliament is a serious breach of our rights and privileges. This is not the first time government is assuring us on security, but we demand they follow what they are promising because this government is not following the law. Our laws and procedures need to be followed and the Speaker has to be notified of any arrest of an MP,\u201d Thyolera said.<\/p>\n
According to parliamentary powers and privileges Act Sections 3 and 4 provide tgat the Speaker of the National Assembly should be notified of any arrest of a legislator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Government on Wednesday assured members of Parliament (MPs) that their rights and privileges will always be upheld during sittings. The assurance follows the discontinuation of proceedings by the Speaker Richard Msowoya on Tuesday after the arrest of two prominent opposition MPs Peter Chankhwantha and Jessie Kabwila on suspected treason charges. Msowoya told the House that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19587","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\/19587","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=19587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19588,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19587\/revisions\/19588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}