Mutharika said he deliberately does not answer anyone putting deadlines to him referring to demands made by some civil society regarding the ATI Bill.

“Somebody told me that the civil society gave me seven days. I deliberately did not answer. Anybody putting a deadline to Peter Mutharika, Peter Mutharika is not going to answer that person. We are going to stop this kind of stuff. It’s disrespect,” Mutharika made the remarks in Lilongwe, at a press conference organised to brief Malawians on his trip to Malta, United Kingdom and South Africa.

He, however, highlighted some of the issues in the Bill which need to be addressed.

“There are a number of issues in that Bill. We have for example, a provision in the Bill which says that the Bill will cover any information that happened before the Bill was enacted. That means you can go back to 1891, when this country was created… there is no way we can say that. The law comes into effect the day I sign,” he said.

He added: “It says, in future no Parliament can ever repeal this law. Parliament is sovereign, it can pass any law or repeal any law, including the Constitution…. You cannot say in future Parliament cannot change this law. You cannot do that. That has to be changed.”

“You see, no need really because we are going to pass ATI. Nobody is fighting against it. We are going to pass it. We have said that it’s in our manifesto. We were the first people to say it in the manifesto that we are going to have Access to Information [Bill passed]. So we will do it. But it’s just a question of how we are going to do it,” he said.

The World Bank and the European Union have also given Mutharika’s administration until December 30 to enact the Bill. But Government insists that it will pass it in March.