‘May 20 is an important day for Malawi’

With only three days to the country’s First Tripartite Elections, our reporter Boniface Phiri talks to Nice Trust executive director Ollen Mwalubunju to explain the country’s readiness for the polls.

Q: How can you describe the country’s preparedness for the elections?

A: To a greater extent the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has tried to put in place most of the structures. But they are also challenges that it has faced. For example, the registration process which is one of the key aspects of an election was successfully conducted with a high turn-out of over 90 percent, nomination of candidates was also done and that the ballot papers were printed and have arrived in the country. Despite these successes, MEC also faced challenges, especially with the first voter verification exercise that was cancelled because it was messed up. The re-worked voters’ roll improved on the voters question errors but the biggest challenge was the turnout was very low during the verification.

The other area that MEC will need to improve during polling will be logistic management which faced some challenges during the registration as well as verification exercise.

Q: Have the electorate been given enough information to make decisive choices in the elections?

A: Yes, people have  been given adequate information and Nice is confident that the turnout will be high as well as the null and void votes will be minimum given the initiative that have been taken by Nice and other civic education service providers and MEC. For example, Nice has undertaken many voter mobilisation campaigns in line with its 360 degrees strategy whereby voter messages have been spread everywhere in the country through rallies, print media, road shows, sports bonanzas, interactive dramas, branding of rocks in the mountains along the main roads with registration messages, hot spot interaction  such as drinking joints, voter education on wheels approach —volunteers have been paid to travel through buses and minibuses across the country and hold voter discussions with travellers.

Nice also has a structure of 8 000 volunteers who have gone around villages, streets, markets, churches, mosques reaching out to all hard-to-reach areas of Malawi with mobilisation campaigns. The 360 degrees strategy also targeted water ways where voters are mobilised through boats, canoes and ships like Ilala reaching out to isolated island such as Likoma, Chizumulu and some small island in Mangochi, Nkhotakota, Zomba and Karonga. The 360 degrees civic and voter education strategy has proved to be very effective as all the eligible voters who have been reached with voter messages and this increased the statistics of people who registered for the tripartite elections scheduled for May.

Q: How has the State broadcaster MBC fared? The opposition claims that MBC has been biased?

A: Reports from the media monitoring indicates that the MBC has been biased towards the incumbency. However compared with the past, there has been great improvement though minimal where opposition candidates have been covered but the level of frequency and intensity has been low. It is sad to note that although the MBC is sustained through taxpayers’ money, the tax payers have been getting a raw deal at the expense of it being biased against the opposition whose supporters are also tax payers as it is with the incumbency.

Q: What is your view on the parallel voter tabulation (PVT)?

A: Our view is that PVT will assist in the enhancement of the integrity of the results in that if differences are noticed, they will be brought to the attention of MEC to check what will have caused such differences before final results are announced. Equally, if the PVT and MEC results are similar, then the electorate would have the confidence in the outcome of the results.

Q: What’s your comment on several opinion polls tipping different candidates to win the elections?

A: This may have confused voters but Nice and other stakeholders have put on measures to explain to the people that opinion polls are not results of an election but studies that can make a prediction of what could be the likely outcome of an elections. They could be correct or not. We have also emphasised to the people that it is only MEC that will declare winners of the elections and that it is only after voting on the 20 May when the results will be announced.