By Isaac Salima:
There is a misunderstanding between the Malawi Law Society (MLS) and the office of the Registrar of Political Parties on some clauses of a ruling on political party funding.
The High Court’s Civil Division, sitting in Blantyre last week, ruled in favour of MLS in a case in which it was demanding information from the registrar’s office on the source of funds for political parties in the country.
This followed a request that MLS made in 2021, invoking the Access to Information Act, when it asked the Registrar of Political Parties to furnish it with information on how four political parties— Malawi Congress Party, Democratic Progressive Party, UTM and United Democratic Front—had sourced their funds between 2019 and 2020.
However, the registrar’s office did not provide the information, prompting MLS to apply for a judicial review of the decision.
In his ruling, Judge Mike Tembo agreed with all except one of the declarations made by MLS.
Asked Wednesday if they were ready to comply with the ruling by providing the sought-after information, Registrar of Political Parties Kizito Tenthani referred us to one of the clauses of the judgement, which reads: “Consequently, this court grants the claimant all the declarations sought as outlined in paragraph 5 of this decision except the one on fixing time within which the defendant ought to do certain things as sought by the claimant.
“This is because the defendant has now ably explained in these proceedings why he could not provide the requested information for the period in question herein and has updated the claimant on the establishment of the office of the Registrar of Political Parties.”
Tenthani said the ruling indicates that the judgement made it clear that his office did not provide the information because it did not have it.
The development means that the registrar’s is not obliged to provide the information which MLS sought.
But MLS President Patrick Mpaka said his understanding was that the registrar needed to comply with the rest of the declarations in the ruling.
“There are aspects that need to be responded to because they were not resolved. Those issues that are not covered by other developments concerning the subject need to be complied with. If the registrar does not respond, he will be doing the same things that his predecessor was doing,” he said.
Section 27 (2) of the laws mandate political parties to make declarations of any donations with a monetary value of at least K1 million.
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