State Vice President Dr. Saulos Chilima on Monday shunned the official opening ceremony of the Malawi Investment forum and the Southern Africa Regional Integration Stakeholder Forum at Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe.

The development comes barely days after Chilima announced that he will soon be leaving the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) under President Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika citing corruption as the main reason.

According to the programme seen by faceofmalawi reporter, Chilima was among the invited guest at the function and per tradition he was supposed to welcome the President.

But to the surprise of many Chilima did not show up.

The development re-ignited speculations that have been there before that the two are indeed in bad blood.

Last week Chilima told the media that his relation with the President is cordial and he thanked him for picking him as his runnningmate ahead of the 2014 tripartite election.