Commotion in LL ahead of polls
There was commotion and tension at the Lilongwe District Council offices yesterday as voting materials were being dispatched to various centres after members of some political parties blocked vehicles from leaving the premises.
The commotion began on Sunday night when four vehicles without the tripartite elections (TPE) registration plates were deployed to the district commissioner (DC) and district education manager (DEM) office to ferry voting materials.
This prompted observing political parties to deflate the vehicles’ tyres, threaten to set alight the vehicles and their contents and beat up one driver of the Lilongwe City Council vehicle registration BP 523.
But it was later confirmed that the lorry with Malawi Prison Service registration plates was carrying ballot papers for the visually impaired persons.
In the car park of the DC’s premises, allegations flew across and no amount of reassurance from representatives of the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC), including commissioners Allan Chiphiko and Nancy Tembo, could quell the situation among the disgruntled gathering.
“We are not leaving until we have a full explanation on why boxes are leaving for centres which already received ballot papers. What is in the boxes that they don’t want us to see,” one person who refused to disclose his party affiliation demanded from the MEC officials present.
Chiphiko attempted to bring calm to the heated tension by assuring them that representatives of political parties would be addressed by members of the Multiparty Liaison Committee (MLC) who arrived a few hours later and went into a meeting with Tembo.
UDF member in the MLC, Robert Jamieson, later addressed the gathering, saying there were no problems detected and appealed to the people to allow the vehicles to leave with the voting materials.
A short while later, vehicles carrying materials started leaving the DC’s offices, but people still demanded to see the contents of alleged four ballot boxes with marked ballot papers which they claimed were inside the DC’s office.
