Parliamentary committee tells Chakwera to fire 2 DPP MEC commissioners

Parliament’s Public Appointments Committee (PAC) has recommended to president Lazarus Chakwera to fire two Malawi Electoral Commissioners who represent the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

The committee made the recommendations after noting that both the Constitutional Court ruling had the Supreme Court ruling on the election case found the Jane Ansah commission incompetent.

A member of the Public Appointments Committee (PAC), Peter Dimba says the committee expects Chakwera to act on the recommendation and immediately fire the two; Jean Mathanga and Linda Kunje.

“As an Advocate of rule of law, we further expect His Excellency, the President to correct the error of his predecessor and balance up the Commission in accordance with the Electoral Commission Act which stipulates that only parties with at least 10% Parliamentary representation shall contribute Commissioners proportionally and that no single party shall have more than 3 Commissioners.

“In our case, only MCP and DPP qualify to contribute 3 Commissioners each and not what APM did in appointing 4 DPP Commissioners and 2 MCP Commissioners,” he said.

However this goes against a legal advice which the attorney general Chikosa Silungwe has given to the president.

Silungwe fears that if the two are fired on account of incompetency, yet they handled the June 21 court sanctioned presidential election which ushered in Chakwera into the presidency, then somone can challenge the polls on account it was handled by incompetent commissioners.