The proposal sought to transfer the appointing powers from President to the National Assembly which they said was for the interest of the bureau’s independence.

The amendment of Section 5 (1) of the Corrupt Practices Act was drafted and presented in the august house by Lilongwe South West Member of Parliament, Peter Chakhwantha who proposed that the appointment of both the Director and Deputy Director of ACB be done by the Public Appointments Committee of Parliament based on merit and through an open recruitment process and that the Director be reporting and answerable to Parliament through the Public appointments Committee.

But government defeated the opposition with 82 votes to 75 with 34 absentees during the roll call to determine the winner.

“Honorable members, this means that we cannot continue with other processes of the bill. Therefore, the bill Amendment has been defeated,” announced Richard Msowoya Speaker of the National Assembly just after the mover, Chakhwantha reported that his motion has been shutdown.

The drafted amendment came in the House on Thursday after the House some few weeks ago had adopted the amendment motion following a victory of 75 to 67 votes by Opposition during the division to determine if the mover of the motion, Chakhwantha, should be allowed to wind up the motion and ask the House to adopt it.

Tempers then flared up in the House until speaker Richard Msowoya put things to rest.

“The core process of the bill has gone through, and as usual in any context one side wins the other side loses. And this has been the process if there was point in the process of the bill where you thought something procedurally went wrong you have the right to point it out but let’s not perpetrate this kind of discussion for the sake of scoring political points,” said Msowoya.

Throughout the general debate of the bill Government side continued to oppose the amendment of the section and it also defeated the Opposition by 76 to 73 votes during the division voting to determine if the House needed to curtail the debate to allow Chakhwantha to wind up the debate and propose that the House should adopt the drafted amendment bill.-additional reporting by Edwin Mauluka