Citizens call for constitution review conclusion
The country’s citizenry have asked government to consider concluding the constitution review process of 2006/07 before holding the next tripartite elections, saying it is long overdue.
The appeal has been raised in a communiqué presented to the media in Blantyre yesterday and it contains recommendations made at the conclusion of citizens’ conference on democracy, elections and governance in Malawi held on August 5 2014 in Balaka.
The meeting in Balaka was facilitated by the National Advocacy Platform (NAP) in collaboration with the Balaka Civil Society Network with support from the State of the Union (Sotu) Malawi.
According to the communiqué, delegates at the August 5 meeting said the review should, among other things, include “reintroduction of Section 64 on the recall provision that empowers citizens to hold elected leaders accountable.”
Reads the communiqué: “There should also be reintroduction of the senate as a legal house to directly represent the interests of ordinary citizens’ and other interest groups and strengthening of Section 65 that seeks to enforce the representative functions of the members of Parliament [MPs] by stopping their unnecessary migration from one party to another without the consent of the constituents.”
The citizens have also added support to the 50+1 electoral system, saying with continued failure of the electoral processes to produce a national leader who has clear mandate from majority votes as the first-past-the-post system does not adequately take care of the wishes of the majority voters.
“Electoral reforms should be introduced to allow that the presidential candidate to be declared a winner must amass majority vote of over 50 percent of the total votes cast and this calls for the introduction of the 50%+1 formula to replace the first-past-the-post system based on simple majority,” the communiqué reads.
In an interview yesterday, Youth Consultative Forum secretary general Linda Harawa, a member of NAP, said Malawians stand to benefit if the issues raised in the communiqué are addressed with the urgency they require.
