Malawi govt officials play pass-the-buck over who’s REALLY running the country

A bizarre game of buck-passing has erupted at the heart of Malawi’s government after First Vice President Jane Ansah was mysteriously frozen out of Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting — with officials tying themselves in knots trying to explain why.

The saga has exposed what looks like utter chaos inside the Presidency, as one spokesperson after another dodged questions, contradicted each other, or simply hung up the phone rather than explain what really happened.

At the centre of the storm: why was Ansah — who was working from her Capital Hill office in Lilongwe that very day — nowhere to be seen at a Cabinet meeting reportedly run by Second Vice President Enoch Chihana, while President Peter Mutharika was away?

Rather than clear the air, government spokesmen seemed determined to muddy it further.

First up was Ansah’s own spokesperson, Richard Mveriwa, who dropped a bombshell: the First Vice President hadn’t even been told the meeting was happening.

“We do not know that there was a Cabinet meeting and if there was one then she [Ansah] was not invited,” he said — inadvertently confirming Ansah had been frozen out entirely.

Next, journalists turned to the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC), only for spokesperson Focus Maganga to bat the question away, insisting it was a matter for State House.

State House, though, had no answers either. Presidential Press Secretary Cathy Maulidi simply lobbed the question straight back to the OPC — leaving reporters stuck in an infuriating loop between two offices, each pointing the finger at the other.

The merry-go-round finally ground to a halt with Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Justin Saidi, who refused to engage at all.

“I am not in the Cabinet,” he said curtly, before ending the call.

The stonewalling has left Malawians none the wiser — and constitutional lawyers concerned. Section 92(3) of the Constitution states Cabinet meetings must be chaired by the President or, if he’s away, the First Vice President — with the Second Vice President only stepping in if BOTH are unavailable.

Adding fuel to the fire, Ansah herself posted a video on the very same day showing her hard at work at Capital Hill — undercutting any suggestion she was simply unavailable.

Political commentator Benedicto Kondowe didn’t mince his words, warning the fiasco was chipping away at public trust.

“Malawians expect that when the President is not available the first vice-president should represent him but what is happening now is not painting a good picture because we are all in the dark as neither of the two has come in the open to explain what is happening,” he said.

The row has also reignited whispers of a rift between Mutharika and Ansah, after a string of earlier moves stripped key responsibilities from her office — with Cabinet ministers increasingly wheeled out to represent the President at events Ansah herself was attending.

With State House, the OPC and Ansah’s own office all failing to agree on a single version of events, what began as a simple question of who chaired a meeting has snowballed into a full-blown crisis of accountability at the very top of government.

By Tuesday evening, government had still offered no unified explanation for why the First Vice President — present in Lilongwe and clearly on duty — was left out of a Cabinet meeting run by her junior colleague.

Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :