Attorney General (AG), Kalekeni Kaphale, has three reservations on the draft Political Parties Bill which is yet to be presented to Cabinet after the arrival of President Peter Mutharika from the United Nations General Assembly (Unga) in the United States of America.<\/p>\n
Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Samuel Tembenu, has also committed that the bill would be tabled in Parliament during the November 2016 session.<\/p>\n
Kaphale revealed his reservations at a high powered meeting of donors and government and other stakeholders under the Malawi Electoral Cycle Support Project (Mecs) held on September 29 2016 in Lilongwe and co-chaired by Finance and Economic Planning Minister Goodall Gondwe and United Nations Resident Coordinator Mia Seppo.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AG had three reservations to the Bill although he highlighted that Cabinet will have the final say. The AG noted that the provisions to do with an independent registrar for political parties could waste public resources given the infrequent registration of parties that arise.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second reservation noted was on the proposal to limit membership to only one political party. The last reservation has to do with disclosure of private political party funding. The AG feels that the provision may disadvantage opposition political parties as those individuals or firms supporting them might be concerned at being sidelined from government business opportunities as a result,\u201d part of the minutes of the meeting read.<\/p>\n
The bill was expected to be tabled during the last sitting of Parliament.<\/p>\n
After failing to be tabled, Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD) met Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs on August 23 2016 where he committed to have it tabled in Parliament during the November 2016 session according to the minutes.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Justice finalised revision of the bill by September 2 and CMD board and the ministry held a meeting over the bill on September 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cDraft Political Parties Bill to be presented to the Legal Affairs sub- Committee of Cabinet before being presented to a full meeting of Cabinet when the President of Malawi returns from United Nations General Assembly [and ] to be published by 1st October 2016,\u201d the minutes read.<\/p>\n
CMD Programme Manager, Gerard Chigona, told the meeting that the bill focuses on five major aspects which include independence of the Office of Registrar of Political Parties; rigorous conditions for registration and deregistration of political parties; prohibition on campaign handouts; disclosure of private political party funding and emphasis on intraparty democracy.<\/p>\n
Gondwe said he was impressed with the progress made on the bill and that he was eager to see it passed in Parliament before 2019.<\/p>\n
According to the minutes, Gondwe welcomed the provision that bans campaign handouts which he said would in turn help in the fight against corruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Attorney General (AG), Kalekeni Kaphale, has three reservations on the draft Political Parties Bill which is yet to be presented to Cabinet after the arrival of President Peter Mutharika from the United Nations General Assembly (Unga) in the United States of America. Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Samuel Tembenu, has also committed that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33904","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\/33904","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=33904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33909,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33904\/revisions\/33909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}