Malawi Law Society accuses top prosecutor of shielding political allies

The Malawi Law Society (MLS) has publicly challenged the country’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Fostino Maele, accusing him of discontinuing a string of high-profile criminal cases in a pattern the legal body says threatens to erode public confidence in Malawi’s justice system.

In a pointed statement marking Malawi’s 62nd independence anniversary, the Society said it was troubled that many of the cases being dropped involved individuals either politically connected to the current government or previously represented by Maele himself before he took up the role of DPP.

The Society was careful to acknowledge that the constitution grants the DPP wide-ranging prosecutorial discretion, exercised either independently or on the direction of the attorney general.

But it argued that how that power has recently been used has left the public deeply uneasy.

“Based on information available to the Society, many of the affected cases involve political figures aligned with the current government and/or former clients of Mr Maele,” said the statement, signed jointly by MLS president Davis Njobvu and honorary secretary Francis M’mame.

Although the constitution obliges the DPP to explain any decision to discontinue proceedings to parliament’s legal affairs committee, the Society said a growing number of Malawians now believe prosecutorial powers are being deployed to protect the politically influential from facing court.

Such perceptions, it warned, are corrosive regardless of whether they are strictly accurate — damaging the independence and credibility of the criminal justice system all the same.

The Society reserved its sharpest criticism for a case now before the high court: an application by the Anti-Corruption Bureau, made on Maele’s instructions, to discontinue corruption charges against the businessman Lin Yunhua.

It questioned why a case involving serious corruption allegations should be halted before its evidence has been tested in open court.

“The Society questions why a corruption-related case should be discontinued without the evidence being subjected to judicial scrutiny,” the statement said.

“The Society is further concerned that the accused person was previously a client of Mr Maele before his appointment as DPP. This creates an apparent conflict of interest.

“The Society urges Mr Maele to reconsider his position and to avoid any perception that prosecutorial power is being exercised for personal or improper purposes.”

The Society said safeguarding public confidence in prosecutorial independence was fundamental to the rule of law, invoking the principle that justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done.

The intervention marks one of the most forceful public rebukes of a sitting DPP by Malawi’s legal profession since Maele took office, and is likely to sharpen an already fraught debate over prosecutorial independence and the handling of politically sensitive cases.

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