Some Members of Parliament (MPs) on Monday queried the conduct of Attorney General (AG) Kalekeni Kaphale on issues surrounding the position of United Democratic Front (UDF) MPs in Parliament.<\/p>\n
We reported in yesterday\u2019s edition of The Daily Times <\/em>that Kaphale wrote Speaker Richard Msowoya expressing his displeasure on the way the latter is handling the issue.<\/p>\n Rumphi East MP Kamlepo Kalua expressed concern over Kaphale\u2019s action when he stood on a point of order soon after tea break.<\/p>\n \u201cIs it in order for the AG to threaten this House?\u201d Kalua queried.<\/p>\n Kaphale\u2019s letter \u2013 which is also copied to Minister of Justice Samuel Tembenu \u2013 states that the AG is concerned that Msowoya seems to ignore his earlier advice that as long as UDF MPs have not resigned from their party or joined governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), they cannot be deemed to have crossed the floor.<\/p>\n Msowoya, however, ruled Kalua out of order for raising the issue, saying the MPs were debating the national budget.<\/p>\n More MPs expressed interest to talk on the matter but Msowoya said they could not have a point of order on another point of order.<\/p>\n Msowoya was more elaborate later when Kalua wanted to raise the issue again.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen matters come out in the press, you should be very calm. You can be sure that your chair is a very stable element,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n His explanation, however, did not stop Lilongwe Msozi South MP Vitus Dzoole Mwale from saying that what the AG said could affect their work and it cannot go without the lawmakers\u2019 comment.<\/p>\n The Speaker eventually cited Parliamentary Standing Order 99, which talks about conduct of the Speaker.<\/p>\n \u201cThe conduct of the Speaker, ministers, members, judges, resident magistrates and public officers shall not be called into question in the course of debate, except by way of a substantive motion containing a specific charge,\u201d reads the Standing Order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some Members of Parliament (MPs) on Monday queried the conduct of Attorney General (AG) Kalekeni Kaphale on issues surrounding the position of United Democratic Front (UDF) MPs in Parliament. We reported in yesterday\u2019s edition of The Daily Times that Kaphale wrote Speaker Richard Msowoya expressing his displeasure on the way the latter is handling the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4280","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\/4280","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=4280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4291,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4280\/revisions\/4291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}