The third and last phase of the fresh voter registration exercise ends in four days’ time. Those who have been registering are citizens of Malawi or have resided in the country for at least seven years; those who will be at least 18 years old by the polling date; or anyone born on or before September 16 2007.
Congratulations if you have already registered. Voting in an election is everyone’s democratic right. This is why the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) and other stakeholders have been traversing the country appealing to all eligible voters to present themselves at voter registration centres so that they register to vote on September 16 2025.
Sadly, there are those who are eligible to register but did not do so for one reason or another. A few such people that I have interacted with said they don’t see the reason to vote because once elected into government, the elected officers do not fulfil their promises.
Unfortunately, it is not only the illiterate or semi-illiterate people who hold such a view. There are many people including those considered enlightened who also hold the same view. No wonder the first and second phases of the voter registration exercise only registered a paltry 60 percent and 61 percent, respectively, of the projected number of eligible voters.
I don’t expect the third phase to be very different from the first two phases in terms of the numbers of people who will register to vote. Save to say that the figures might rise slightly because unlike in the first and second phases, in this last phase, all political parties have been busy wooing eligible voters to go and register as voters.
My message to those who don’t want to register as voters has been that by not voting they are making it easier for other people to choose the people they want, including those elected leaders who are long on promises and short on fulfilling them.
The development calls on MEC and other stakeholders mandated to provide civic and voter education to members of the public to intensify their voter education campaigns. Which brings me to the crux of this article.
Most prospective voters register to vote when they have a candidate in mind to vote for. This means that for MEC to register the highest number of voters, all political parties and candidates should have gone full throttle wooing eligible voters to register from the first day MEC r e l e a s e d t h e voter registration calendar for the three phases.
Unfortunately, what I have seen instead is that during the first and second phases, opposition parties ganged up in a cut-throat war of words against MEC and its officers discrediting them that they were compromised and that the Smartmatic— the election technology—they were using was a rigging tool. Some people have said this was strategically myopic on the part of the parties. That the message this war was sending to potential voters was that they should not register since the election has already been rigged or will be rigged. Besides these politicians were spending more time in the city holding press conferences against MEC this and that instead of going on the ground wooing people to register. I can’t agree more.
Another strategic blunder was UTM Party’s decision to hold its elective convention well into the second phase of the voter registration period. There was just too much jostling between and among the party’s NEC members about what to do and what not to do which affected the planning for the convention.
There can be no doubt that some UTM supporters were waiting for the outcome of the convention to decide whether or not to register. My hope is that now that the party has a 2025 presidential torchbearer, all its supporters will leverage their energy towards supporting Dr Dalitso Kabambe.
