Martha Chizuma is vindicated. The Malawi legal system is rotten to the core with lawyers accused of judge shopping.
One of the senior lawyers in the 2019 Malawi Presidential Elections court case has made nerve wrecking revelations that some judges are incompetent and that the Malawi Law Society comprises a portion of corrupt lawyers who indulge in judge shopping, a claim that lends credence to Martha Chizuma’s allegations that a judge handling a corruption case received bribes.
Speaking during a presentation on Friday in Mangochi where Malawi Law Society held an annual general meeting and conference, Modecai Msisha expressed concern that one can usually guess the lawyers involved when certain judges issue court orders.
According to Msisha, there are also questionable relationships where a lawyer would call a judge to discuss a case instead of the lawyer going through the Registrar of the High Court and Supreme Court.
Msisha, who has been in the legal profession for 47 years, also urged lawyers to question issues of incompetence and impartiality among judges.
He said: “We are a profession, we are not a bunch of cowards. We have to stand up and do what we are supposed to do and tell them you are not behaving like a judge.
“We cannot be accused of not standing up for judges, if you remember there was a time when there was an issue to do with impeachment of judges, we stood up for them because we are members of the bar.”
High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal Registrar Gladys Gondwe said the Judiciary has been engaging MLS leadership on such matters affecting court users.
Some lawyers such as Frank Mbeta and Lusungu Gondwe have previously been accused of serious misconduct.
Gondwe, a senior manager at Ritz attorney, was last year banned from representing one of Malawi’s black billionaires Thom Mpinganjira in a case in which Mpinganjira was seeking bail pending appeal of his conviction of attempting to bribe judges.
The ban came after Gondwe and the law firm secured a midnight order from a magistrate in Zomba quashing the arrest warrant which ACB had used to arrest Mpinganjira in January, 2020. Gondwe has also represented Prophet Shepherd Bushiri.
During trial for the Mpinganjira judge bribery case, it was claimed that money for the judges was being sent through lawyer Frank Mbeta but the money did not reach the judges.
Ironically, questions have been tailed of the 7 Billion Malawi Kwacha that Msisha, his fellow counsels and clients got in legal cost for winning the presidential election case.
The presidential election court case is the one that led to the imprisonment of Thom Mpinganjira. The business mogul attempted to bribe high court judges with K100 million only. He has appealed the case and has been released on bail. Mpinganjira owns FDH bank which has been accused by the Director of Public Prosecution of indulging in money laundering and other financial crimes with the Central Bank, the Reserve Bank of Malawi.
Mpinganjira tried to bribe judges through lawyer Frank Mbeta, says witness
It’s an open secret that the Malawi Judiciary has been known to take bribes from clients and buying court rulings by paying judges inorder to get favourable judgements. A case of Tom.Mpinganjira getting bail at night in Zomba court while the case jurisdiction was Blantyre is not an isolated case.
This is why there is a big backlog of cases in the High Court as well as Supreme Court because of selection of judges deliberately to get cases won or dismissed.
There is rampant corruption in the courts and destruction of courts documents just by paying the court clerks and other auxiliary staff at the courts.
The people full and languishing in.prisobs in Malawi are the poor with simple and flimsy minor offences.
The big business cartels who are milking the economy are free and loitering with charges adjourned or going for judicial reviews as one of the decaying tactics of the rich.