DEPUTY Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara is set to be kicked out of the MDC on Thursday morning, a day after he purported to have expelled the party’s leader, Welshman Ncube.

Mutambara claimed to have “summarily dismissed” Ncube, accusing him of fanning disunity in the party. But the move was fraught with legal difficulty as the MDC constitution does not empower any one individual to fire a party member.

The MDC’s national council meets in Harare starting at 10AM local time to decide Mutambara’s fate after he snubbed a party directive to stand down as DPM and be replaced by new leader, Ncube.

The decision to expel Mutambara, who led the party since 2006 before he was deposed last month, must get the backing of at least two thirds of the party's national council members.

Mutambara insists that his signature on a 2008 power sharing pact with President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, which he signed as leader of a faction of the MDC, entitles him to stay on as Deputy Prime Minister.

But the MDC is determined to exercise its power of recall, and will use Mutambara’s expected expulsion on Thursday to begin a process to sideline him.

Mutambara, however, will not go down without a fight amid claims by Ncube’s supporters that he is receiving material and political support from Mugabe’s Zanu PF party.