Malawi cabinet closer to collapse

Malawi’s parliament set the wheels in motion yesterday to sack dozens of defecting lawmakers, a move set to trigger the collapse of President Bingu wa Mutharika’s minority government.

A senior parliamentary official said summonses had been sent to more than 50 members of the 193-strong parliament, ordering them to answer petitions filed by fellow MPs for their dismissal when the chamber re-convenes on Friday.

"Parliament has hand-delivered petitions to the affected MPs throughout the country," the official, who declined to be named, told AFP.

He would not give the exact number of petitions, saying instead that it amounted to more than 50.

"Everybody has been petitioned individually and the MPs have seven days to respond to the petitions," the official added.

The speaker, Louis Chimango, is set to invoke a controversial constitutional provision to expel lawmakers who changed party affiliation after he was granted the powers by the country’s supreme court on June 15.

Mass by-elections will then have to be held to replace all those who had been forced out of parliament, leaving Mutharika with the task of having to stitch together another coalition or else be forced out of office.

Chimango, a lawyer and an MP for the opposition Malawi Congress Party, "will sit down with a team of lawyers to analyse the responses of every individual MP to form a legal opinion before expelling them from the chamber," the official said.

"It will be a complex process which will take sometime," he added.

The June 15 judgement was the climax to a long-running dispute which was argued before the lower courts, with Mutharika himself leading the pressure for a definitive interpretation of a clause in the constitution after opposition parties began pushing for the expulsions a year ago.

Around half of the MPs affected are now loyal to Mutharika’s government and his ruling Democratic Progress party after being enticed to cross the floor.

The petitions for their dismissal have come from the opposition Malawi Congress Party and the United Democratic Front (UDF) of ex-president Bakili Muluzi, who have a combined force of 105 MPs.

The Democratic Progressive Party has filed petitions for a number of UDF MPs to be expelled for crossing the floor.