The Malawi High Court sitting in Blantyre on Thursday ruled that embattled Vice President Cassim Chilumpha must stand trial as charged by the state.

"The accused must answer both charges of treason and conspiracy to murder, and this court finds no duplication in the two counts," Justice Andrew Nyirenda ruled.

Nyirenda was making a ruling on an earlier complaint that Chilumpha's lawyers raised whereby they argued that there is duplication in the two counts of treason and conspiracy to murder that the vice president was answering.

The vice president, alongside his alleged accomplices businessmen Yusuf Matumula and Rashid Nembo, both close allies of former president Bakili Muluzi, were arrested on April 28, 2006 on the charge of plotting to assassinate President Bingu Wa Mutharika by hiring white professional South African assassin.

The High Court, however, acquitted Nembo last month after the state indicated that it had no evidence against him.

Justice Nyirenda also ordered the government to amend particulars of the two counts to provide the accused an opportunity to understand fully the charges that were leveled against them.

Following Justice Nyirenda's ruling, Chulumpha and Matumula are therefore expected to take plea next Monday as trial of Malawi's high profile case continues.

The Malawi government announced in a statement issued immediately after the arrest of the three that it was in possession of overwhelming evidence in form of recorded tapes that were implicating the three accused.

Chilumpha has publicly proclaimed his innocence, claiming that he was being persecuted by government because he refused to join President Bingu Wa Mutharika's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

There has a clear strain between Mutharika and Chilumpha since February, 2005 when the president dumped the then ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) to found his own Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after falling out with his predecessor Bakili Muluzi who ironically anointed him.

Chilumpha, who was Mutharika's running-mate in the May 2004 presidential elections, remained in the UDF, making it difficult for the two most powerful men in Malawi to work together.

In February, 2006 Mutharika and his cabinet attempted to sack Chilumpha from his position, accusing him of arrogance, disrespect, absconding from his constitutional duties and violating his oath of office.

Chilumpha, however, obtained a court order stopping government from effecting his "constructive resignation" and asked the country's Constitutional Court to commence a judicial review that would determine whether he indeed constructively resigned from his position.

The court, however, ruled that the country's constitution did not provide for constructive resignation of both a sitting president and vice president.

Source: Xinhua