National flag likely to be reverted to the 'old one'

Henry Phoya

 

Government is likely to revert the national flag to the old one with its red sun rising after taking back the national flag bill to parliament. Members of the national assembly are likely to vote for the reverting of the flag as it was before.
The newly appointed leader of government business in parliament Henry Phoya made the revelation in an interview with state controlled broadcaster Malawi Broadcasting Cooperation MBC. The office of the speaker announced that parliament will be officially opened on Friday 18^th May for budget meeting.
“As government we want to have a national flag that will that every Malawian should be proud of not the flag that some quarters of the society will not be happy with. As government we are concerned so we are taking this bill parliament.” Phoya said.
He did not elaborate if President Joyce Banda’s administration was planning to have the old flag back which had a red rising sun. One of the agenda’s of People’s Party for the 2014 general election campaign was to revert the flag to the one with the rising sun and not with a full white sun on the middle.
Late President Bingu Wa Mutharika’s regime changed the flag using its enormous muscle in parliament despite public idea which was not in favour of the move. The former administration claimed that the full sun indicated that Malawi has ‘developed’ fully economically and development wise.
“We have put across 11 bills, among them we will look into the issue of Section 46 that infringes media rights, disability bill, injunctions bill just to mention a few.” Phoya said.
Chairman of National Media Institute of Southern Africa NAMISA Malawi Chapter Anthony Kasunda recently asked government to scrap off the ‘bad law’ describing it as repressive and undemocratic.
Section 46 of the penal code empowers the Minister of information to ban any publication that id deemed not to be of public interest. Media practitioners and the public have claimed that the section makes the countries democracy fragile and that the law was repressive.
“We just provide the platform. Our role is to provide platform and give questions to the people we have elected. We are in a democracy and it is in the public interest.” Alaudin Osman, one of Malawi’s veteran journalist and Managing Director of Capital Radio was quoted in Nation on Sunday of 24^th April, 2011.
The Mutharika administration also changed the injunction system where an individual was no longer allowed to obtain an injunction restraining government on any action without any representation from government.
Phoya who is the current Minister of Lands and Housing and also leader of government business in the national assembly was fired from the then ruling party Democratic Progressive Party DPP when he was personally against the injunction bill and reminded his fellow members how they were survived with injunctions when Mutharika’s government was in minority. He described the