The Malawi Government is now wrestling with the deadly consequences of its rash and poorly-thought-out secondments, as senior police commissioners drag it into a deepening legal battle that has exposed confusion at the heart of the public service.
After Chief Secretary to Government Justin Saidi abruptly redeployed five Malawi Police Service commissioners to the mainstream civil service, the officers--Christopher Katani, Rhoda Manjolo, Emmanuel Soko, Chikondi Chingadza and Barbra Mchenga Tsiga--ran to the High Court and secured an order stopping the move. That single injunction has now thrown the administration into a panic.
Attorney General Frank Mbeta, in a hurried application dated December 5, is begging the court to lift the order, arguing that the new administration needs "trusted commissioners" and warning that government operations are already paralysed.
Saidi, in a sworn statement filed a day earlier, admits the injunction has effectively tied his hands. As head of the civil service, he says he cannot carry out his duties and that essential government functions are now being disrupted because of the court order--an admission that the government's own decisions have backfired spectacularly.
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Judge William Yakuwawa Msiska, who granted the initial order, also allowed the commissioners to proceed with a judicial review of the government's decision--pushing the matter further into legal territory the State is desperate to escape.
This is not an isolated disaster. Only weeks earlier, Judge Kenyatta Nyirenda blocked another sweeping redeployment--this time involving five senior Malawi Defence Force officers, among them Major Generals Chikunkha Soko, Saiford Kalisha, Swithan Mchungula, Kakhuta Banda, and Brigadier General Harold Dzoole. They had been shuffled off to parastatals as "directors of security" before the court stepped in again.
Taken together, the two cases paint a stark picture: a government rushing headlong into redeployments without legal clarity, without consultation, and without foresight--only to meet stiff resistance from the very system meant to uphold order.
Now, with two injunctions blocking two major redeployments, the administration finds itself locked in a legal chokehold of its own making. The courts are firm, the officers are fighting back, and the government is scrambling to undo the fallout from decisions it never fully thought through.
What began as routine transfers has exploded into a full-blown governance crisis--one that is forcing Malawians to ask whether there is any method left in the State's madness.
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