I Am Not Perturbed- Tembo
Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president, John Tembo, says he is not perturbed by the new developments in parliament- where a section of his own party Members of Parliament is contesting his position as Leader of Opposition.
Tembo, who is billed to maintain his position as Leader of the House by virtue of coming second in the May 19 Presidential and Parliamentary elections, has faces received some opposition from strange quarters, who include his own, and United Democratic Front, MPs who want change in the position of chief opposer.
The MCP leader said in an interview on Thursday it was normal in a democracy for people to raise “various sorts of objections, but it is the constitution that dictates everything at the end of the day”.
“That doesn’t concern me. In addition, the laws are clear that the leader of a party that gets more seats in parliament becomes leader of opposition. This means that the issue (about the position of Leader of Opposition) is an internal MCP matter,” said Tembo.
He added that those who were advocating for a change of leadership were using their freedom of expression and, as such, he had no grudge against them.
“All we want is to develop our country, so we must do things with this aspect in mind,” he said.
A section of MCP MPs have joined fired legislator, Ishmael Chafukira, to call for change of leadership on the opposition side. This forced Speaker of Parliament, Henry Chimunthu Banda, to announce on Wednesday he would make his judgement on the issue today.
But MCP Director of Research, Lington Belekanyama, wondered why the issue required the Speaker’s action when it was only an internal party (MCP) issue.
“There is nothing for the Speaker; it is an internal party matter that will be solved by the MCP,” said Belekanyama.
EC Banks of Elections Review Report
By Richard Chirombo
The Electoral Commission (EC) has expressed hope the on-going Elections Review exercise would help it handle future polls better.
EC Chairperson, Anastasia Msosa, said in an interview the May19, 2009 Parliamentary and Presidential elections posed a big challenge for the electoral body, but the way it was “successfully” handled raised management prospects for future polls higher.
Msosa said she did not expect findings of the elections’ review process to be “much different from what we have noted as some of the problems that marred the elections”.
“Of course, we are looking forward to results of the Elections Review process because we stand to learn a lot from them. It was a very big challenge to run to May19 elections but we do not expect the findings to be far much different from what we have found already,” said Msosa.
She said the review, which commenced in Lilongwe this week, would also help the EC in preparing for the Local Government elections slated for 2010.
“It is a timely intervention because we stand to benefit a lot, in terms of planning for the local government elections next year,” said Msosa.
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