Mukhito vindicated: High Court’s intervention lends weight to constitutional overreach warning

When Democratic Progressive Party Secretary General Peter Mukhito warned that proposed parliamentary inquiries risked crossing the constitutional line between oversight and investigation, his position was quickly attacked in some quarters as political interference.

Now, the High Court has temporarily hal

ted the proposed inquiries pending judicial review.

That development does not mean the court has already ruled that the Speaker acted unlawfully. It has not. But it does confirm one important point: the constitutional questions raised by Mukhito were serious enough to require judicial determination.

The DPP’s position has never been that Parliament should not provide oversight. Parliament must scrutinise government. Public institutions must account for public resources. Ministers and public officers must answer legitimate questions. That is democracy.

But democracy also requires boundaries. Parliament is not the executive. Parliament is not the police. Parliament is not the Anti-Corruption Bureau.

Parliament is not the judiciary. Each institution has powers given to it by the constitution and the law, and each must exercise those powers without usurping the functions of another. That, the party argues, is precisely the principle Mukhito was defending.

The High Court’s intervention should not, therefore, be read as a political victory over Speaker Sameer Suleman. The substantive matter remains before the courts, and the judiciary must be allowed to determine it independently and without political pressure.

Government has also made clear that it did not institute or direct the proceedings, insisting the case was brought by a private citizen exercising his right to seek judicial review.

The DPP maintains it has nothing to fear from lawful scrutiny. What it rejects is the suggestion that accountability can only be achieved by ignoring constitutional limits. Accountability without legality, the party argues, is not accountability – it is institutional overreach.

Malawi’s democracy, on this view, is strongest when Parliament provides robust oversight, the executive governs within the law, investigative agencies perform their statutory functions, and the courts independently interpret the constitution. That balance, the DPP insists, must be protected regardless of who occupies public office.

So was Mukhito right to raise the alarm? By this argument, yes – he was right to insist that the constitutional boundaries be examined. But the final word on the legality of the proposed inquiries belongs to the courts, not politicians.

Until that determination is made, one principle should unite everyone: oversight, yes; accountability, yes; constitutional overreach, no; rule of law, always. Nobody is above scrutiny, and nobody is above the constitution.