Fireworks could erupt again on Wednesday this week — as they did a year ago — when the Pan African Parliament meets in Midrand and tries once more to elect its president. Southern Africa is expecting its official candidate, Zimbabwean Zanu PF Senator, Chief Fortune Charumbira, to be elected unopposed because it says that west, central and east Africa have all held the presidency before — and north Africa is also backing Charumbira.
To further complicate the election, Malawian and PAP MP Yeremiah Chihana has challenged the southern caucus’s nomination of Charumbira as its official candidate and has thrown his hat into the ring.So the election could once again get messy. A year ago a chaotic and violent dispute in the PAP’s chamber in Midrand over the principle of rotating the presidency forced the cancellation of the election of the president and four vice-presidents. These positions have since remained vacant.
The ANC’s chief whip in the South African Parliament, Pemmy Majodina, who is also a PAP MP, threatened to lay criminal charges against Senegalese MP Djibril War who she said had kicked her. But he later claimed it was an accident and apologised, which she accepted.After last year’s embarrassing pandemonium, the African Union Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat directed the AU’s Office of Legal Counsel to examine the principle of rotation.
The east African caucus of PAP MPs has also largely rejected the principle of rotation and is backing Aboug, sources told. Its view is that the African Union cannot dictate to the PAP, which is an autonomous body and so an open election should be held on Wednesday and then the newly constituted PAP assembly should decide for itself whether the rotation principle should apply in the future, and should legislate accordingly.
Chihana endorses the principle of rotating the presidency, but notes that among southern African countries, Malawi, Botswana, Lesotho, Zambia, Eswatini and South Africa have never held either the presidency or a vice-presidency. Some might consider this all far too much ado about very little as the PAP has no more than advisory powers anyway. When it was launched 18 years ago, the intention was that it would eventually evolve into a body empowered to adopt legislation binding on the AU’s 55 member states.
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