By Burnett Munthali
Preamble
You can know, at family level, if your marriage is not working and some of the common signs of a marriage not working and heading for divorce including a lack of communication, a lack of intimacy, a disregard for one another’s feelings, feeling disconnected or a lack of interest in connecting, Infidelity, dishonesty and distrust and different goals in life. You do not have to keep fighting after you have divorced. It sounds silly and unreasonable.
At community level it also means a great deal to be expelled from the church. Excommunication is really a kind of banishment, a punishment that is handed out by a church when one of its members breaks some important church rule. The Latin root is excommunicated, meaning “put out of the community,” which is just what happens when a person is excommunicated. You cannot keep on fighting with the same church with which you do not agree. You simply have to join another church and move on.
One can be kicked out of a political party in government or opposition at national level. Obviously, the punishment for members who break party discipline varies on a case-to-case basis, but members may find themselves in a variety of positions from being internally demoted in the party to being expelled from the party itself. If you are not satisfied with the reasons given by your party, then you can use internal appeal procedures if there is one. Some political parties have an internal appeal procedure which you can use, and I believe, all political parties Malawi have an appeal committee. You have to use any internal appeal procedure before taking any other action.
Therefore, when things are not working for you in any setting, you should detect and take a step either to stay or move forward in another direction. Similarly, when you break the law, rules or regulations of any society, your conscience must guide you to realise what is right or wrong.
The issue at hand
Some DPP members in Ndirande, who are loyal to Kondwani Nankhumwa, stopped him on the way so that he could speak to them. According to video clips which have gone viral on social media, a handful of people were seen tearing DPP party regalia into piece foes and burning them to ashes while others sang songs with a message asking, where they would go after the dismissal of Nankhumwa. However, whatever happened on that day appeared to be staged and fake to me, it was not real. In his speech, Nankhumwa advised his followers to take their time and calm down because he would soon speak to them about his political future and direction this week. During his address, he announced that he would appear on the ballot paper in 2025.
However, according to my opinion, I do not think there is anyone who is stopping Nankhumwa from contesting in 2025 as a presidential candidate but what I think the DPP has done is simply to expel him from the party because everyone is tired with his conduct against the party.
Concepts of Discipline
Government or opposition can kick or expel someone from their team if they commit serious disciplinary offences, but this is uncommon. People join a political party because they share the values, priorities, and goals of that party. Looking at the conduct of Kondwani Nankhumwa and his team, it is an open secret that he does not share the values, priorities, and goals of the DPP but probably with himself or another political party.
If the person is then elected as a member of parliament for that party, there is an expectation they will collaborate with other party members to achieve the party’s goal. However, sometimes a lawmaker or Member of Parliament may strongly disagree with a decision their party makes and speak and vote against their party. Unfortunately, Nankhumwa is collaborating with other political parties and leaders to achieve other goals different from his original party.
Voting against your party can also be considered as crossing the floor. It is unusual for someone to do this because party loyalty and discipline must be strong in any political party setting. Crossing the floor in Malawi is when an elected member in Parliament joins another political party represented in Parliament and results in a bye election in that particular constituency but could make the member unpopular with their teammates! Similarly, by intending or proposing to introduce the age limit bill, Kondwani Nankhumwa and his team are making themselves cheap and unpopular and a huge price to that effect is waiting for them without any doubt.
The gist of Section 65(1) of the Constitution of Malawi is that the Speaker shall declare vacant the seat of any Member of the National Assembly who voluntarily ceases to be a member of his party or joins another political party in the National Assembly. Kondwani Nankhumwa might be hesitant to join another political party represented in Parliament because by sounds his constituency would be declared vacant and a bye election could be declared.
Each political party has its own rules about membership which may allow for expulsion. If a lawmaker or Member of Parliament is expelled from their party, they do not cease to be a member of parliament because they have been elected to the National Assembly. The person would become an independent or they could apply to join another political party or begin a new party of their own! Starting his own or joining another political party is the only wise thing left for Kondwani Nankhumwa.
Party discipline is a system of political norms, rules and subsequent respective consequences for deviance that are designed to ensure the relative cohesion of members of the respective party group. In political parties specifically (often referred to as the caucus or parliamentary parties), the essential purpose of party discipline is to get all its parliamentary members to maintain the party line and vote in support of policies agreed to by a majority of the parliamentary members (or of the party leadership).
In order to maintain party discipline, given political parties usually appoint a party whip or leader of opposition whose primary task it is to maintain party discipline and to ensure the given party members support the party on the floor of the legislature. In liberal democracies, party discipline commonly refers to the control that party leaders have over their caucus members in the legislature. Party discipline is important for all systems of government that allow parties to hold political power, as it can often be a determining factor in both the practical functionality of the government, as well as the efficient function of legitimate political process. Parliamentary groups can have discipline analogous to party discipline. That is where Kondwani Nankhumwa goofed and failed.
Breaking party discipline in both formal and informal settings may result in a number of consequences. Punishment for members who break party discipline varies on a case-to-case basis, but members may find themselves in a variety of positions from being internally demoted in the party to being expelled from the party itself. This results in there often being immense pressure for parliamentarians to compromise their beliefs if they conflict with the policy or decision that has been made by the party’s leadership.
In order to maintain strict discipline and discourage behavior such as organizing a National Governing Council (NGC) meeting, which entails the given members being disobedient to leadership, parties often offer a number of incentives to loyal members. These incentives also greatly vary on a case-to-case basis; examples include financial incentives and internal promotion within the party. There are, however, occasions in which members of a party are granted a conscience vote or free vote, in which party discipline is waived, and given members are free to vote to their individual preference.
This shared ideology is an essential and important part of party cohesion, and reinforcing the given shared ideology through methods such as party discipline is crucial to the ruling party’s survival in government as well as the opposition. Leadership is the ability of an individual or a group of people to influence and guide followers or members of an organization, society, or team. Leadership is not about creating confusion at all. Elevated levels of arrogance as the case for the fired team are associated with low self-esteem, low general intelligence, poor job performance, and low organizational citizenship behaviors. This suggests that arrogant individuals are not (and do not believe themselves to be) actually superior, but rather use arrogance as a way to mask inadequacies.
