MPs nearly exchange blows in parliament

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Malawi Parliament

…govt accused of imposing the revised budget 

There were clashes in parliament today between the opposition and members of the ruling party after one of the opposition legislators called Malawi President Peter Mutharika a ‘dictator’ after a heightened row.

parliament
Parliamentarians nearly fought today.

This was when the Members of Parliament (MPs) deferred a revised MK 4.4 Billion allocation sliced from the MK 8.3 Billion. In an argument that the legislators made, the increase of MK 100 million allocation for the August House does not tally with the works that the house is involved in.

This forced the Speakers to suspend the house for two hours after which the MPs got surprised to see a document which had indicated that the MPs had approved the revised budget instead as seen in the amendments bill were passed on.

This then led to an unceasing war of words between the MPs with some of them going to the the extent of dressing down Mutharika.

Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Lazarous Chakwera was quick to question Minister of Finance of Finance Goodall Gondwe on the amendments papers passed in the house yet the house had not agreed on miscellaneous votes in the revised budget.

Gondwe had later apologized after the house nearly became a boxing ring with legislators form the government side backing the move

It was at this point that opposition legislators ganged up and railed the Mutharika led government.

Kamlepo Kalua
Kalua: Lost his cool.

Vocal Peoples Party acting Veep, Kamlepo Kalua turned his ire on Mutharika branding him as a dictator and calling him names that saw deputy speaker of parliament, Esther Mcheka Chilenje to adjourn the house Friday, 11th March 2016.

This comes at a time when the opposition has been asking Mutharika to step down claiming he (Mutharika) is clueless on how to run the country and therefore needs to call it quits, something which the Malawi leader branded as ‘hatred’.

In the revised budget, government adjusted the budget downwards due to a decrease in local revenue collection.

Presenting the midterm budget statement in Parliament on last week, Gondwe proposed that Members of Parliament should approve an adjusted budget since government did not meet its revenue collection targets.

In June last year, Parliament approved a K927.9 billion budget which was to be locally financed but Gondwe on Friday proposed that it should be reduced by K23.7 billion so that it should now be  K906 billion due to under-collection of revenue.