Court to hear missing MEC materials case

Lilongwe Magistrate’s Court will today hear a case where Manase Jossam, a Lilongwe Area 25 resident, was found with National Registration Bureau (NRB) and Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) materials.

Officers from Kanengo Police arrested Jossam and when they searched his house, they found two NRB backpacks containing the following MEC materials: 20 monitor identity cards (IDs); two marked empty envelopes; two voter registration application book tracking forms; two handbooks for security forces; two handbooks for monitors; completed accreditation forms of party and local monitors; and  two registration booths.

National Police spokesperson James Kadadzera said Jossam was arrested on February 14 and was found in possession of MEC materials, police shoes and a Malawi Defence Force (MDF) uniform.

Said Kadadzera: “After they searched him at the roadblock mounted at Lilongwe Teachers Training College, police took him to his house to see if he had more MEC materials. That is when they also found that he had police shoes and MDF uniform. He will appear in court tomorrow to answer charges of being found in possession of government property.”

MEC has since acknowledged that they are aware of the information on the missing materials, saying they leave it for police to further investigate.

A statement issued yesterday and signed by MEC chief elections officer Sam Alfandika quotes Jossam as having told Kanengo Police that he bought the backpacks in Nkhotakota for personal use and was not aware of their contents until the officers searched him.

“The police are further interrogating him to establish how he got the items and the intention of keeping them. On its part, MEC is also doing internal investigations using the information from some of the documents to establish the staff that might have used the backpacks during voter registration period,” reads the statement in part.

MEC has emphasised that no voting materials were found among the recovered items as reported by the media hence assuring stakeholders that the kits are non-sensitive materials and cannot be used to obtain voter registration or access polling by fraud.

MEC last year lost two pieces of biometric voter registration kits (BVRK) numbers 1962 which was found lying on a coal train in Mozambique with one part missing while the other one numbered 1241 was stolen in Mzuzu.

And early last month, about 751 voter registration cards from a centre in Lilongwe Msinja North constituency were found abandoned at a verification centre in Mangochi. Police in Mangochi arrested a MEC temporary staff on allegations that he was at the centre of the discovered voters cards.