Malawi President Arthur Peter Mutharika, a Yale-trained constitutional law scholar, has come under scrutiny after bypassing First Vice President Jane Ansah and assigning Second Vice President Enoch Chihana to chair a full Cabinet meeting on Monday.
While Mutharika attended to other official business in Blantyre, the Cabinet met in Lilongwe under Chihana’s leadership.
Vice President Jane Ansah, who was in the country and available, did not chair the meeting and was not invited.
The move has reignited debate over Section 92(3) of the Constitution, which sets out a clear order for presiding over Cabinet meetings.
The provision states that the President chairs Cabinet. In the President’s temporary absence, the First Vice President assumes that role.
Only if both the President and the First Vice President are unavailable should the Second Vice President take over.
Critics argue that by going directly to the Second Vice President while the First Vice President was available, Mutharika disregarded the constitutional sequence which he swore to defend .
Mutharika is not only Malawi’s Head of State but also one of Africa’s most academically accomplished constitutional lawyers.
He earned a doctorate in law from Yale University and spent decades teaching international and comparative constitutional law at Washington University in the United States.
Political observers are now asking how a president who built his career interpreting constitutions can justify appearing to sidestep the very constitutional provisions he once taught.
Government has so far offered no detailed legal justification for the decision, saying only that President Mutharika remains fully in charge of government affairs.
Both Mutharika and Vice Jane Ansah are among the few Malawians who were behind the making of the Malawi constitution.
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