- Submissions that seek to introduce 75 years as maximum age limit for presidential aspirants at the just ended Constitutional Review Conference in Lilongwe might bar the 74-year-old President Bingu wa Mutharika who has indicated his intensions to contest in the next presidential election in 2009.
Although many participants to the conference are of the view that this submission be adopted, some people said they will fight up to the end to make sure that this has not been taken aboard.
President Mutharika pleaded with the conference no to amend the Constitution in order to deal with or punish an individual or a system of the society.
“This is fundamental because the moment this principle is lost, the sanctity of the Constitution would become eroded and lose its power to bind our nation together,” said Mutharika.
Malawi, which has been dogged by a constitutional crisis that has paralysed the whole system of governance due to constitutional loopholes as acknowledged by Mutharika and his Justice Minister Henry Phoya during the opening of the Conference last Tuesday, is currently considering a number of constitutional submissions made on the executive.
The conference is trying to provide remedies to the governance crisis, which has continuously pitted the executive in protracted war with the legislature over presidential legitimacy and the president’s lack of constitutional power to dismiss his vice even in the face of a standoff, as is the case in Malawi among others.
The submissions made so far, intends to make constitution stipulation on the academic qualifications for nomination or election of the President, level of majority for electing the president, the size of the cabinet which the popular number has appeared to be 20 and that the presidency must seek parliamentary approval for additional.
People want the constitution to spell out on what should happen when a president-elect dies; what should determine the party of government, whether the president should be allowed to resign from the party that sponsored him or her into office like the incumbent Mutharika did and who should become acting president in the absence of the incumbent. The submissions also wanted the constitution to empower the president to fire his vice as the recent political experience in Malawi.
Some participants observed that the present scenario is a repetition of what ensued in the first half of 2004 when former first Vice President Justin Malewezi decided to part ways with his party and distanced himself from the presidency of Bakili Muluzi.
Boniface Dulani, Political and Administration Lecturer at the University of Malawi observed during a presentation of his paper at the conference on Thursday that it was crucial to scrutinise the loopholes of executive branch of government.
The paper called ‘a Comparative Study of the Constitution Chapter on the Executive in Malawi with Five other Constitutions’ looked at the countries of South Africa, Zambia, Federal Republic of Nigeria, the United States and the Republic of Kenya.
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