Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament has finally finished with an excercise of enhancing into the Standing Orders, laws for calling President to Parliament.
The Committee was mainly outlining in the Standing Orders the existing two Constitutional provisions Section 89 (3)(c) and 89 (4) that outlines procedures for the time the President is supposed to come to Parliament and called to answer questions from members.
The Committee decision to incorporate the laws into the Standing Orders is basically to help legislatures to correctly refer to each provision and know when to use them when calling the President to the House to respond to their questions.
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| Chakhwantha |
Peter Chakhwantha, Chairperson for the Legal Affairs Committee explains; "What the committee has done is to make sure that the two have been clearly spelled out as separate provisions which also require different manner of being handled. So what we have done is put in black and white that this should be done this way and the other section be handled in this way.”
Under section 89 (3) (c), it is mandatory that before the House consider budget, the president should come to answer questions and policies of Government. And therefore, where the president is required to respond to questions in accordance with the provision, President may not delegate such functions to a member of the Cabinet. While section 89 (4) President can be summoned at any time by the motion of the House, however, during that time President can delegate a Cabinet Minister.
At present, the President comes to the House for the opening of Budget Meeting and New Session of National Assembly to deliver State of National Address and after finishing, the President’s take leave of the House without being asked and it is difficult for members to call President to the House to respond to their questions.
But outlining of these laws into the Standing Orders will result in a slight change of the Programme of opening of the Budget Meetings as immediately when the President finish delivering State of National Address will follow question time from members for the President to respond.
"To make sure that we seal all loopholes that one would want to take advantage of, we have tried to put some procedures that will commensurate with the other section 93, because remember there are two sections there. The other one deals with President when he finishes addressing the Nation, but the other one is where you give 21 day notice to the President with the question that you want to pose and for him to come to respond to that which we just noticed of late that Presidents want to delegate most of these answers." Continued Chakhwantha
Chakhwantha then said by clearly outlining the two legislations into the Standing Orders will remove unnecessary confusions that have prevented members from inviting the President to answer their questions.
"There was no such confusion, but maybe it was deliberately created to wear that face of confusion. The law is very clear, the president is supposed to take questions from members of Parliament once he finishes delivering State of National Address." He said, "But what happened that time, there was no need for us to go back to Standing Orders and work out as if these things are not yet provided in the laws of Malawi."
He then emphasized that the National Assembly needs President because some of the questions members have, were already attempted by Ministers and they preferred to defer them to have the Head of State consulted.
"So, where they would say they would rather consult President in that scenario we would actually just ask the President to come. Where he has to delegate there must be sufficient reasons that can convince us.” he said
During the just ended Meeting of the National Assembly, five legislatures who include Leader of Opposition and President of Malawi Congress Party, Lazarus Chakwera failed in their attempt to force President Peter Mutharika to appear in the House to answer their questions as it was noted in the House that legislatures had wrongly quoted the provisions.
Procedures Of Asking President for Oral Replies
Current Standing Orders had only recognized Section 89 (3) (c) of the Constitution of the Republic of Malawi that states “The President shall each year… attend Parliament and shall… respond to questions”
The Standing Order sets therein procedures for asking questions to the President which are regulated by the Standing Order 50 (3) (b) as follows.
- Members intending to ask questions to the President will submit notice of their questions to the Office of the Speaker. But the question should not; be excessive length, involve more than one ministry, include names of persons unless necessary, include offensive expressions and include any statement of fact unless the question is unintelligible without it.
- The question will be sent to the Office of the President and Cabinet to prepare the responses and that questions addressed to the President are taken on Wednesdays.
- In asking the question, the Speaker firstly calls out the question number and then constituency name of the member before calling upon President to provide the answer to the question. But another member is not allowed to ask the question on behalf of the owner of the question.
- If the question has been asked but the reply is not given, then the question may be carried forward to the next time when the President is called again by the House to answer the questions and the carry over question shall take precedence over all fresh questions on the Order Paper of that day.
- Any member may ask a supplementary question directly arising from the original question for purpose of elucidating any matters of a fact on an answer which has already been given. And a Member may withdraw one’s own question either before the question is placed on the Order Paper or when the question is being asked in the House.
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