Forget court case, two problems stand in Chilima’s way- analyst

Political analyst Lyson Sibande thinks followers of vice president Saulos Chilima who are celebrating the discontinuation of his alleged corruption case are missing two main problems standing against the UTM leaders presidential ambitions.

Chilima: Two problems on his way

Over the weekend, the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Masauko Chinkakala indicated that the State was considering dropping corruption charges that were leveled against Chilima.

However, according to Sibande, the court case was the least of Chilima’s problems, saying that even Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won the 2014 elections with a treason case on his head.

Sibande argued that Chilima needs to surmount two major problrms standing on his way, which are; having a weak political party and eligibility having exhausted two terms.

“He formed a party that is too weak to make him president because it relies on popular urban votes that are a minority. In Malawi you can only win with regional stronghold rural votes.  The only way to solve this problem is to have Chilima represent either DPP or MCP because these are the only parties with regional strongholds to supply the needed winning votes. Unfortunately, none of these two parties can give him the candidacy because they can’t trust him and he would need to disband UTM which he also has been reluctant to do. There will never be an electoral alliance where Chilima will be candidate as long as MCP or DPP are in that alliance -that’s why Chilima failed to represent the Tonse alliance in 2019 despite being more eligible than Chakwera – and an alliance that does not involve these two giants, can’t win elections.

“The second problem is that he has exhausted the term limits according to the case law authority that interpreted section 82 of the Constitution. There is a way to work around this problem through a Presidential referral, but there is no way President Chakwera would seek referral on that just to help Chilima. But even if MEC cleared Chilima’s eligibility and the decision is not challenged in Court, problem number one still stands in his way. He is stuck”.

Sibande’s second thought follows the 2009 Constitutional Court ruling, which followed an application by former president Bakili Muluzi and his United Democratic Front (UDF) applicants after the Malawi Electoral Commission had rejected the former president’s third term presidential nomination, also in its literal interpretation restrains any presidential candidate from picking a vice-president or second vice-president as their running mate if they served the maximum two terms.

The interpretation, as widely held by some legal scholars, puts Chilima between a rock and hard place as he is serving his second term running up to 2025.

The judgement was delivered on May 16 2009  by three three judges, Edward Twea, Healey Potani and Michael Mtambo, who took substantial time to interpret tenure of office in the presidency, said the Constitution limits the terms that a person who has served a term as

Reads part of the judgement: “Ordinarily, a Vice-President would be eligible to contest for the office of the President when the President’s tenure comes to an end. However, our Constitution bars this. If this were not so, one could, in ascending order, be a Second-Vice President, then be a First Vice-President and then the President, or, in descending order, be the President, First Vice -President and then the second Vice-President.

“This, in effect, would have permitted a person to serve the presidency for 30 years or more. In this respect the phrase: “in their respective capacities,” bars an officer even when he changes capacity between the offices. Section 83(4) of the Constitution clearly demonstrates this, as we have seen earlier”.

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