{"id":68593,"date":"2018-07-24T10:46:50","date_gmt":"2018-07-24T08:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=68593"},"modified":"2018-07-24T10:46:51","modified_gmt":"2018-07-24T08:46:51","slug":"csos-pen-speaker-on-peter-mutharikas-impeachment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/07\/24\/csos-pen-speaker-on-peter-mutharikas-impeachment\/","title":{"rendered":"CSOs pen Speaker on Peter Mutharika\u2019s impeachment"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY SERAH MAKONDETSA: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have written Speaker of the National Assembly, Richard Msowoya, asking him to call for an emergency meeting of Members of Parliament to consider impeaching President Peter Mutharika over his alleged involvement in the Malawi Police Service (MPS) corruption scandal.<\/p>\n

The call comes at a time a leaked Anti- Corruption Bureau (ACB) investigations report on a procurement scandal at MPS indicates that businessperson Zameer Karim deposited K145 million on April 13 2016 into a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Standard Bank account whose sole signatory is Mutharika.<\/p>\n

In a letter dated July 20 2018, which The Daily Times<\/em>, has seen, the CSOs, trading under the banner of Human Rights Defenders Coalition, want Parliament to invoke impeachment procedures in line with Section 86 of the Malawi Constitution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are writing you and your office as citizens of Malawi in line with Section 12(1) of the Constitution of Malawi which says that all legal and authority of the State, government and the President of Malawi derives from the people and such authority shall only be exercised in accordance with the interest of the law and of the people of Malawi,\u201d reads part of the letter.<\/p>\n

Through the emergency assembly meeting, the CSOs further call for the conviction of Mutharika for allegedly breaching laws of the country and violating principles of the Constitution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe consider this a serious matter that requires [the] sitting of the National Assembly to consider impeaching President through laws of Malawi as the conduct of the President boarders on violating [principles of] the Constitution of Malawi and written laws as outlined by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in their report,\u201d it reads.<\/p>\n

Speaker of Parliament, Richard Msowoya, Monday acknowledged receiving the letter, further saying he has responded to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes I have received the letter and I have already responded to it. I cannot tell you what I have said because it is confidential,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

However, Chairperson of the coalition, Timothy Mtambo, said they are yet to get a response from the Speaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not received the response as we speak but we are hopeful that the Speaker will listen to us and help Malawians hold the President accountable to his actions on this issue,\u201d Mtambo said.<\/p>\n

Government spokesperson, Nicholas Dausi, trashed the call, saying the CSOs should learn to operate within the confines of the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that they are taking advantage [of the situation] because the Speaker is now in a party which is insulting the President day in, day out. We are in a constitutional government; democracy demands constitutional order. CSOs should learn to confine themselves in a constitutional dictate,\u201d Dausi said.<\/p>\n

Earlier, the CSOs gave Mutharika and some senior police officers a 14- day ultimatum to resign or face impeachment, respectively, over their alleged involvement in the matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY SERAH MAKONDETSA: Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have written Speaker of the National Assembly, Richard Msowoya, asking him to call for an emergency meeting of Members of Parliament to consider impeaching President Peter Mutharika over his alleged involvement in the Malawi Police Service (MPS) corruption scandal. The call comes at a time a leaked Anti- […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68593","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\/68593","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=68593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68595,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68593\/revisions\/68595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}