By Ntata Stinger:
Vice President Jane Ansah’s admission that she is being sidelined from participation in government should concern every Malawian, whatever their politics.
Her proposed response is equally revealing. She intends to follow the appropriate legal procedures to address the situation.
She should. But she should also recognise that legal procedure cannot, by itself, solve a political problem deliberately created within political space.
If people within the Executive are actively working to exclude a constitutionally elected Vice President from meaningful participation in government, the first question is not merely whether some law or procedure has been violated.
The more important question is: What political objective does her exclusion serve?
That question changes everything. The Constitution can establish the office of Vice President. Law can protect its tenure. Courts can pronounce upon particular powers and procedures.
But none of these things can compel a President to trust a Vice President, make political actors include her in the rooms where consequential decisions are actually made, give her access to information being deliberately withheld, or manufacture political influence where political power has decided she should have none.
That is the politicojuridical trap. The law may preserve your office while politics empties it of power. And if that is what is happening, patiently pursuing legal remedies while waiting for the correct political space eventually to emerge may misunderstand the nature of the problem.
Political space is rarely awarded by procedure to someone whom political interests have decided to exclude. It must be created through legitimacy, constituency, public positioning, institutional alliances and the strategic exercise of whatever constitutional authority remains available.
This is not an argument for abandoning legal procedure. It is an argument for understanding its limits.
Madam Vice President, use the law. Protect the constitutional office. Insist upon every procedure to which that office is entitled.
But also read the politics.
Ask who benefits from your exclusion. Ask what your irrelevance would make possible. Ask why people supposedly belonging to the same Executive would prefer their own elected Vice President outside the processes of government.
And above all, do not confuse remaining legally Vice President with remaining politically relevant. Because in a politicojuridical system, those can become two very different things.
The law can keep you in office while politics removes you from power.
