High Court dismisses Macra’s request

The High Court in Blantyre has rejected a request by Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) to vacate the permission for judicial review and an injunction its deputy director general Francis Bisika obtained to preserve his employment contract.

Bisika obtained the court order to restrain government from dictating Macra on his contract.

High Court judge Mike Tembo has since maintained Bisika’s order granting permission to commence judicial review proceedings, quashing three of Macra’s four grounds of their application to set aside the two orders.

The court gave Bisika relief after Macra allegedly withdrew his contract barely two weeks after Macra’s extraordinary board meeting renewed the same.

However, Macra rushed to the court to have the orders set aside arguing, among others, that there was no named defendant to the proceedings as required by law.

In its fourfold grounds, Macra also argued that there were no proceedings started before the court with a mode of commencement known to the law; that the proceedings were so defective that the court’s coercive force was wrongfully procured and; that the proceedings were so defective that the defendant was embarrassed to respond to.

But in his ruling, Tembo said despite not correctly naming the defendant, the applicant disclosed a case that was fit for further investigation at a full hearing of judicial review.

He ordered the applicant to accordingly make necessary amendments.

Lawyer representing Bisika, Chancy Gondwe, said in an interview that the court’s decline meant that Bisika remains deputy director of Macra.