By Evarist Baimu Nyaga Mawalla - Home

are four ways under the Constitution in which a High Court judge may coase tohold office: by vacating office upon attaining the age of sixty years pursuant toArt. 110 (1); by electing to retire from the service of the United Republic at anytime after attaining the age of fifty-five years pursuant to Art. 110 (2) ; by beingremoved from office pursuant to the provisions of Art. 110 (7); and by resigningfrom that office pursuant to the provisions of Art. 149. Beyond the Constitution,death is the only other factor that may avail itself to terminate the appointment ofa judge. It should also be mentioned that these events do not necessarily havethe name implications on the future of the judge concerned, but I guess that I amnot called upon to discuss that subject here, I can only allude to it in the limitedcontext of the second anomaly to which I will now turn.It has been pointed out that the contentious words in Annoxturo “A” also suggesta confusion between removal from office and being retired from the publicservice. To recapitulate, it was communicated to the applicant that the President“has removed you from the office of a Judge by retiring you in the public interest.”This suggests that retirement was viewed as a function of removal to the end thatwhile the objective appears to have been to remove the applicant from office, itwas supposed that the mechanism for realizing that objective was by retiring him.I apprehend that this notion arose from the mistaken albeit innocent belief thatremoval from office and being retired implied the same thing. And I amstrengthened in this view by the very words of exhibit, “C” and Annoxturo “A”. in468