President Lazarus Chakwera has told newly appointed ministers and deputy ministers that they are his ministers and they must report to him.
The president was speaking during the swearing in ceremony for the 30 cabinet ministers and deputy ministers at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe.
Chakwera demanded loyalty from the ministers saying he is the one who appointed them.
“Do not become presumptuous and imagine that your appointment is attributed to someone else. I expect regular and timely reports to my office of the progress you are making, and I expect those reports to be presented to me directly and for me to be the one that directs you on whether any contents in your reports should be shared with anyone else. My point here is simply to remind you that you are not just a Minister of Government. You are my Minister,” said Chakwera.
He also warned the ministers against accepting gifts or payments in order to render service or from people their ministry has rendered a service. The President told the ministers that he will not use his powers to protect any corrupt minister.
Present at the ceremony were chiefs and families of the appointees but Vice President Saulos Chilima did not attend the cabinet swearing in.
The Vice President’s absence comes as Chakwera has taken away from Chilima the responsibility for Economic Planning which he was given in the first cabinet appointed in 2020.
In the current cabinet, Chilima is only responsible for Public Sector Reforms.
Chakwera and Chilima were elected in 2020 after campaigning under the Tonse Alliance, a coalition of Chakwera’s Malawi Congress Party, Chilima’s UTM and other parties.
Social commentators say Chakwera’s speech today shows that the alliance is dead.
“The president is marking territory, is taking full responsibility and will assume credit for all that will go right. The vice president is, yet again, being cut off and may, in future, use this to claim plausible deniability for any of what may go wrong.
“Importantly, today may have sounded the death knell to the illusion of a Tonse Alliance when what obtained was, in actual fact, only a vehicle needed by MCP to get into power and by UTM to hope to get into power one future day,” a social commentator said.
