Malawi: Opposition parliamentarians reject information ministry allocation

According to the proposed budget, the ministry is supposed to get K300m but opposition parliamentarians led by chairperson for the parliamentary Committee on Media and Communication, Berson Lijenda refused to pass the ministry's vote insisting that the minister responsible, Patricia Kaliati meet his committee first.

“We want to meet the minister now because last time we asked for a meeting with ministry officials they refused, saying we are a committee without an agenda,” said Lijenda, a former broadcaster in justifying their position.

In reaction to opposition parliamentarians' refusal to pass the ministry of information vote, minister Kaliati argued that the reasons advanced by the opposition are unrealistic.

“The committee chair should tell me why his committee should meet me. We already met them alongside the Media Council of Malawi where we resolved to withdraw controversial programmes on MBC and TVM as demanded by the opposition,” Kaliati said.

She insisted that the budget would not pass if opposition will not approve her ministry's vote.

This is a repetition of the problems the vote for the ministry also faced in last year's budget meeting when the opposition bench demanded that Kaliati apologise for her scathing comments towards the opposition on state broadcasters Television Malawi (TVM) and Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC).

Malawi's 2008/09 national budget is ordinarily passed at the end of every month of June but ever since President Bingu wa Mutharika came to power, his minority government has had problems with members of parliament passing the budget in time.

Parliament has been rocked with disagreement over the issue of the Constitution's Section 65 where opposition parliamentarians are demanding that the Speaker of Parliament declare vacant, seats of MPs who are deemed to have crossed the floor, while government MPs whose seats are on the line, are arguing that the budget should be passed first.

Currently, parliament is meeting and scrutinising vote-by-vote allocation and it was at this period last year that opposition parliamentarians refused to pass financial allocations to MBC and TVM insisting that on one hand the two institutions are biased towards government while on the other hand bent at vilifying the opposition.

Since Malawian law does not allow parliament to pass a vote without a single penny, parliament gave K1 each to MBC and TVM.