Parliament on Tuesday rejected a Bill proposing to amend Section 65 of the Constitution which seeks to restrict MPs from changing political parties in the House which was moved by MCP President John Tembo on Monday.

The Bill was short of 13 votes to hit the required two-thirds majority out of the 168 MPs present after 19 members were absent. After second deputy Speaker Jones Chingola announced the results of the vote which was done through a roll call there was jubilation, singing and dancing from the government benches as well as part of the independents who sang songs in praise of President Bingu wa Mutharika while the UDF and MCP side looked dejected.

The singing and dancing went as far as outside the Chamber after the House was adjourned. But wearing a brave face, Tembo, in an interview said he was not worried that the Bill was rejected. “You don’t worry when justice is done. The process was right because the Speaker allowed debate and voting,” said Tembo, referring to the Monday incident when he was taken by surprise by his colleagues from the Business Committee of the House who challenged him for moving such a Constitutional Amendment Bill which was supposed to come from government.

On Monday Tembo told the House that it was the Business Committee that sent him to present the Bill with the initiative of the former Speaker late Rodwell Munyenyembe. Tembo ruled out any attempts to see the Bill back in the House again. Leader of the UDF in the House George Nga Mtafu said attempts to bring the Amendment again would be made any time in the future. “The debate went on so well only that the results worked differently from what we expected. However, I think the present provision of 65 (1) does not necessarily yield negativity against us. It is quite reasonable as it stands now,” he said.

Mtafu dismissed assertions that the outcome of the vote meant that the opposition has no numbers in the House required for Constitutional amendments. He said getting 111 votes out of 168 did not mean that the opposition was weak. “Yes, it might be true that we have not done extremely well but we had quite a few members who didn’t come,” he added. The debate over the Bill was tense throughout as members from the government side kept referring to the constitutionality of the amendment and the unprocedural way the Bill was tabled in the House.

At one time RP MP for Karonga north west Bazuka Mhango, who is also Minister of Lands and a lawyer by profession, asked the House not to continue with debate as the Bill was not in line with other Sections of the Constitution and also did not follow procedures as required in the Standing Orders. But Mhango’s constant reference to the legality of the Bill attracted objections from the members with some of them shouting that he was turning the House into a court. MCP MP for Lilongwe City South-East, Respicious Dzanjalimodzi, in his argument for the Bill said amending the Section would bring sanity and end the confusion in the House apparently brought about by free movement of MPs.
He said, just as members are brought into the House by voters, it would not be proper for individuals to make their own decisions to change seats anyhow.

“Initially we had an MCP government, then for the past ten years we had a UDF government but today I am at a loss, I don’t know what I would say about this government we know for sure that it was UDF which won the elections. We have allowed things to go out of control here,” he said. But Minister of Home Affairs Uladi Mussa said it would be undemocratic and unconstitutional to make an amendment to the Section just because some leaders of political parties have problems in their parties and would want to hold on to their members who would want to leave the problems by joining other parties.

“Politics is a career, it is not a religion therefore there is no reason you have to be confined to one party. If there are problems in a particular party let the leaders learn good managerial skills and the political technical know how to keep their members,” said Mussa. In his closing remarks on the debate Tembo said after Monday’s showdown with the government side he received phone calls from prominent lawyers who encouraged him to go on with the Bill that there was nothing unconstitutional with it.

The proposed amendment of section 65 (1) reads: “A member of the National Assembly shall vacate his seat in the Assembly if in the case of an elected member, he becomes a member of a political party other than the party of which he was an authorised candidate when he was elected to the National Assembly or if having been independent candidate, he joins a political party or having been a member of a political party, he becomes an independent.”