The Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament is facing fierce national backlash after civil society organisations under the National Advocacy Platform (NAP) accused it of deliberately mutilating the Constitution by recommending that Members of Parliament should continue approving development projects under the Constituency Development Fund (CDF).
NAP chairperson Benedicto Kondowe did not mince words. He described the committee's position as "ill-conceived, constitutionally reckless, and a blatant assault on Malawi's governance architecture."
According to Kondowe, the committee's push to retain MPs at the centre of CDF decision-making is nothing short of a power grab that drags the country backwards--directly into a governance model the High Court has already outlawed through Constitutional Case No. 3 of 2023.
"Approval, administration, and implementation of public funds are executive functions. MPs have no business managing projects or controlling purse strings," Kondowe said.
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He condemned the committee for ignoring professional legal advice from the Ministry of Justice, calling it "constitutional delinquency of the worst kind."
"This is not just a betrayal of public trust--it is legislative greed at its naked worst," he charged.
"When lawmakers discard clear legal guidance to advance personal or political interests, they stop being guardians of the Constitution and become architects of its erosion."
Kondowe warned that placing MPs at the centre of administrative roles they are supposed to oversee obliterates the separation of powers, fuels conflicts of interest, and opens the door to widespread politicisation and unchecked discretion over the K5 billion allocated to each constituency.
"This recommendation collapses the boundary between oversight and execution," he said. "It is fundamentally incompatible with constitutional governance, decentralisation, and even basic regional best practice."
He added that civil society is prepared to take the matter to court if Parliament insists on pushing through what he called an unconstitutional and self-serving distortion of the CDF framework.
"Malawi deserves a CDF guided by law--not one bent to satisfy political convenience," Kondowe said.
But Legal Affairs Committee chairperson Gilbert Khonyongwa dismissed the concerns, insisting that MPs will not be involved in procurement.
His reassurances, however, have done little to quell what many are now calling one of Parliament's most brazen attempts to rewrite its own powers.
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