Parliamentary aspirant withdraws court bids

In a bid for a judicial review of a nullified parliamentary election in Lilongwe City Bwaila Constituency, Malawi Congress Party (MCP) candidate Precious Kabambe has hopped from court to court before withdrawing his case. His case was originally before High Court of Malawi Judge Simeone Mdeza before it was later withdrawn in November 2025, but was slapped with legal costs. He later switched to Judge Kondwani Banda seeking the same remedy, but the matter was again dismissed for failure to pay costs for the first action.

Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) nullified results of the September 16 General Election parliamentary race in the constituency in October due to alleged mishandling of void votes. MEC’s decision prompted Kabambe to seek judicial review before the High Court in Lilongwe. Mdeza ordered that hearing should be inter-parties, but on the appointed day, Kabambe’s lawyers made an oral application to withdraw/discontinue the matter.

Court documents based on submissions from MEC lawyer Andy Kaonga show that “the claimant had attempted to commit an offence in the prosecution of his case and as such the Claimant proceeded to withdraw the case”. Mdeza proceeded to grant withdrawal of the matter, but slapped Kabambe with costs for his actions. On December 8 2025, Kaonga wrote Kabambe, through Mchizi and Associates legal firm, demanding K25 million as costs for the withdrawn case.

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However, before he paid the costs, Kabambe commenced another action before Banda seeking the same judicial review on the matter. Perturbed with the move, Kaonga took the matter back to Mdeza to set aside the withdrawal notice in judicial review case number 96 of 2026 which was then granted on January 22 2026. In application to set aside the withdrawal order, Kaonga argued that as per Order 12 rule 49 of the Courts (High Court) Civil Procedure Rules 2017, “a claimant who discontinues is liable for the costs which a defendant against whom the claimant discontinues incurred on or before the date on which the notice of discontinuance was served on the defendant.” Following this application, Mdeza ordered and directed that the withdrawal/discontinuance of the action by Kabambe be set aside, pending the assessment of costs. At the same time, Justice Banda, who was also apprised of the matter before Mdeza, chided Kabambe, dismissing his quest with costs again the following day, on January 23 2026.

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