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articleleftcol

The Executive should respect Parliament

4 August 2012 Times

Our Constitution of Malawi is a beautiful document, despite its loopholes which can be fixed in a matter of time.

The book espouses the separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judiciary arms of government.

The executive, according to the Constitution, shall be responsible for the initiation of policies and legislation and for the implementation of all laws which embody the express wishes of the people of Malawi and which promote the principles of the Constitution.

The legislature has the responsibility of enacting laws which reflect, in the legislature's deliberations, the interests of all the people of Malawi while the judiciary is entrusted with the responsibility of interpreting, protecting and enforcing the Constitution and all laws in accordance with the Constitution.

However, a pandemic that most executives have suffered from in the country since 1994 is their penchant to meddle in the separate legitimate autonomy of Parliament.

The executive in most cases does not expect Parliament to crash its decisions, more so from its own members of Parliament.

The executive expects its MPs to be bootlickers and to always say Yes Yes Yes. This cannot and shall never be the democracy that Malawians aspired for when they voted in multiparty democracy in 1994.

MPs are supposed to be independent and offer checks and balances to both the executive and the judiciary.

The legislature should not be a mere rubberstamp of appointees, bills and decisions of the executive otherwise it ceases to be a Parliament and becomes a branch of the executive.

We, therefore, want to express our dismay at the conduct of the government chief who summoned Pac members loyal to the People's Party (PP) and chided them for allegedly rejecting President Banda's appointments.

Malawians are tired with appeasement politics and want a new thinking, and a new and professional way of doing things by the new administration, and we seem not to get this from the new administration.

We entirely agree with Public Appointments Committee members that the confirmation of the president's appointees should depend on their qualifications and relevance and not merely based on political patronage.

The new executive should not continue from where the previous administrations stopped in politics of appeasement, but should strive to promote a better way of running government, which is respect to the separate functions of the three arms of government.