The Malawi government has defied a Friday High Court order to reinstate Vice President Cassim Chilumpha and it has gone ahead to strip him off his security guards, official vehicles and personal staff.

"Despite the court ruling, government has removed the Vice President's fleet of 10 official vehicles including his official Mercedes Benz limousine, a 22-man security detail and personal staff," Chilumpha's aide Horace Nyaka told Xinhua Monday.

Nyaka said the Malawi government had reduced the vice president to an ordinary person without any official vehicles and security adding that even two senior government officers had been posted away to other government departments.

The government's action came barely three days after the country's High Court stopped President Bingu wa Mutharika and the government from effecting the removal of the vice president from his position.

High Court judge, Healey Piotani, on Friday nullified the decision by Mutharika to dismiss his vice and referred the issue to the country's constitutional court to interpret whether the president has powers to sack Chilumpha.

President Mutharika announced Chilumpha's sacking on Thursday evening accusing him of arrogance, disrespect, absconding from his constitutional duties and violating his oath of office.

The president said the cabinet had unanimously decided that the vice president on his own volition had not worked in accordance with his mandate and therefore believed that Chilumpha had resigned from his position as the country's vice president.

The vice president's lawyer, Viva Nyimba, who successfully challenged Chilumpha's dismissal in court last Friday, accused government of contempt of court by defying a court order restraining the president from sacking his deputy and stripping him of vehicles and security.

"I am only hoping that government will come to its senses and comply with a court order that restricts it to take away vehicles and security from the vice President," Nyimba told Xinhua.

He said the vice president's legal team would give government up to the end of business on Monday before seeking the court's intervention.

There has been deep rift between Mutharika and Chilumpha since February 2005 when the President dumped the former ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) to found his own Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after falling out with his predecessor Bakili Mluzi who ironically anointed him.

Chilumpha has remained in the UDF making it difficult for the two most powerful men in the southern African country to work together. The situation became even more disturbing to Mutharika as the country's constitution did not allow him to directly sack the vice president.

Source: Xinhua