Does Bingu not believe in the rule of law?

Written by RAPHAEL TENTHANI

It seems President Bingu wa Mutharika is trying to redefine our form of government. Malawi chose multiparty democracy on June 14, 1993 but it seems Bingu is experimenting on a mish-mash of some wacky form of democracy that is teetering between democracy and autocracy where some fundamental principles of democracy are not respected.

There is one word for that: ANARCHY.

Look, we all know Bingu has not hidden his disquiet at the way the judiciary is conducting itself. He has this paranoid feeling that the judiciary is out to get him; that it has issues with him. He is on record as having pleaded for dialogue with the judiciary as if anybody had told him that somebody on the bench had scores to settle with him.

Our good president has made it clear that he does not like the way injunctions against government are being granted in Malawi. He believes Malawi has the largest per capita injunctions in the whole of the SADC region. But he conveniently forgets that he is still President today courtesy of the very injunctions he is frowning upon now.

Perhaps before he raises the ruckus at the way the judiciary is issuing injunctions he should take a sober look at why such is the case. The many injunctions the courts are granting against his government means his government is not conducting its affairs well. Look at the way Bingu fires people; remember Ralph Kasambara, Gustave Kaliwo and Ishmael Wadi, three young men he proudly dubbed his "three young bright minds"? He expended them like used condoms with complete disregard that they might have saved his very life.

So is asking for an injunction in such circumstances a crime?

Bingu can chide the judiciary the way he likes but disregarding its rulings is going beyond the Rubicon of good governance.

Look, there is an injunction stopping him from assenting to the infamous 'Injunctions Bill' which some sober minds in his own party have boldly described as a 'bad law'.

For him to go ahead and assent to the same is very, very scary. Not once but twice did Bingu swear to not only uphold but protect and defend the Constitution. What he did by assenting to the bill runs counter to that solemn oath.

From the time he was elected president in 2004, Bingu has shown traits that he hates acting within the set laws of the country. During his first term he defied several court rulings but we ignored him because we understood the opposition was vengefully out to get him. But this dangerous trait becomes pronounced when we gave him an overwhelming mandate to rule in 2009. Within months after getting the overwhelming mandate he created some new laws whose purpose were suspect.

Take Section 46, for example, where a minister can wake up one morning and ban a publication he or she does not like. With the Protected Names and Emblems and Defamation laws still intact one wonders why such an undemocratic law was necessary.

Despite the public outcry, Bingu still went ahead and made the amendment to Section 46 become part of our laws. But he was not done. After making sure that the irritant media was now at his mercy, he crafted another law that made him the sole decider of whether or not to hold local government elections. From the beginning Bingu has not hidden the fact that he loathes ward counselors. Why he hates them nobody knows. That notwithstanding he created laws that empowers him to pick and choose whether local government elections are held or not and - if they are to be held at all - when.

To show that the only reason why he tinkered with the local government laws was that he hates counselors he changed the laws again to make sure that if we are ever to hold the elections it should be when he is out of State House in 2014! Now Malawian cities have this queer uniqueness of having no mayors!

Back to Bingu's phobia with the judiciary, simple civics tells us that our government comprises the Executive, which is composed of the President and his cabinet, Parliament where the Speaker rules the roost, and the Judiciary where the Chief Justice is the boss. All these arms must complement each other. Anything outside this arrangement smells anarchy.

If he did not like the injunction on the 'Injunctions Bill' Bingu should have asked his Attorney General to try to stay or vacate it. Disregarding the injunction militates against the oath he took. Unless he is trying to abolish the judiciary, what he did by assenting to a bill that had an injunction hanging over it is an impeachable offence. Bingu is president of a democratic Malawi. He does not have the luxury to pick and choose what aspects of our democracy to respect. He is the president, yes, but no law empowers him to outlaw any arm of government.