BY JACK BANDA
I am just trying to help ‘Azimwale’ understand the agreement Lazarus Chakwera made with Saulos Chilima about the presidential candidate and running mate of the Tonse Alliance for 2020 and the next election after that.
Yes, the constitution of Malawi gives the latitude of choosing a running mate to the presidential candidate.
However, to form the Alliance, Eisenhower Mkaka announced that the two political parties had given powers to Chakwera and Chilima to make an agreement on the Alliance, thus who is going to be candidate and who is going to be running mate.
In 2020 Chakwera did not pick Chilima as his running mate, it was based on the agreement that we are now disparaging.
If you argue that the agreement doesn’t matter to Malawi Congress Party (MCP) on how the party is going to conduct itself, basically what you are saying is that:
1. Both Chakwera and Chilima plus the people that drew the agreement ndi makape, they are clueless; they don’t know what they were doing. (Which in a way is true)
2. You are saying that Chakwera is a person without integrity. He doesn’t know how to keep a promise. He is dishonest moved by candy and not principle.
How could he have become the candidate in 2020 under the agreement and refuse to become a running mate but a candidate again. That is being dishonest and evil.
The focal point of the Tonse Alliance is Chakwera and Chilima’s presidency. By the time of the agreement these two creatures had already known who was going to be a candidate from which party and like UTM like to put it, Chilima was humble enough to agree for Chakwera to become a presidential candidate as he assumed the running mate position.
The ambiguity of the clause in the agreement comes because they could not assume that either Chilima or Chakwera were going to be candidates for their parties in the next elections hence they had to make the candidates subject either to NEC or general elections.
It would have been clearer if they had just said, next elections, the candidate was going to be Chilima and the running mate Chakwera. They would have avoided the political correctness and therefore the ambiguity.
However, whoever the candidates are from the two parties, the ceding agreement stands, it is constant. As long as the alliance exists, the agreement is that UTM candidate shall be the candidate in the next elections.
Through the agreement, the MCP and UTM candidates have made an agreement on how to use the privilege and freedom to decide a candidate and a running. For as long as the agreement and the Alliance exist, that is how it has to be. MCP has got to follow legal route to divorce itself from that marriage.
If the Hi5 judgement is regarded as a constitutional law, I don’t see why that agreement is not legal. Chakwera and Chilima signed that contract at Kamuzu Institute in full view of the nation.
The constitution a living document, the agreement should surely matter to a judge as it about lots of people that these two represented as shown by the 2019 numbers. To say that all that we saw leading to the formation of this government doesn’t matter is to say that we are all fools.
