LILONGWE, Malawi
Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera has fired the country’s Attorney
General (AG), Chikosa Silungwe, local media reported Wednesday.
Chikosa Silungwe
No
reason has been given for the development but the country’s online media
outlet, the Nation Publications Limited (NPL) and other local outlets said both
the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) and the Ministry of Justice and
Constitutional Affairs have confirmed that Silungwe’s contract has been
terminated.
Earlier
in the year, the OPC instituted an investigation on the office of the AG
following leakage of a number of memos from the AG giving the president a legal
opinion on particular trending issues.
At
one of the regular televised statehouse press briefings monitored by our
correspondent in April, President Chakwera’s press secretary, Brian Banda,
said the president “is very concerned that memos of this type are leaked to the
public”.
“The
president sees this as a matter of corruption and the president is committed to
dealing with this matter and finding a lasting solution. Once caught, the
culprit will be dealt with,” Banda said then.
But
Silungwe has always distanced himself from the leakage of his memos and he once
described the practice as “simply silly and immature”.
The
AG becomes the second high-profile figure to be fired from President Chakwera’s
first cohort of the cabinet after the Malawi leader fired Minister of Labour,
Ken Kandodo, in April in connection to abuse of COVID-19 funds under the
minister’s guard.
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