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Donors exposed

Kalonga: Kalonga: MEC had  shortages
Kalonga: Kalonga: MEC had
shortages

Donors contributed to the chaos that defined the 2014 Tripartite Elections by failing to fully meet their financial commitments, Nation on Sunday has learnt.
Both the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)—which manages the donor electoral funding basket—have admitted that cooperating partners failed to meet almost half of their budgeted for support to the commission.
Poll authorities have since said MEC’s financial starvation and donors’ inefficient handling of their roles is what led to the shortage of electoral materials, late printing of ballots, the sending of wrong ballot papers to mistaken places, tardy distribution of voting materials and the resultant delayed opening of polling centres that sparked sporadic violence in Blantyre City on May 20, among other hiccups.

 
Also, due to insufficient funding, most polling staff were trained just days to the elections, which led to results processing mistakes and other irregularities that could have been avoided, according to MEC officials.
The fiasco also saw the elections spill over to two more unprecedented days as thousands of eligible voters failed to cast their ballots on the appointed day and within the 6am-6pm window since in some cases the cut-off point was extended to as late as 9pm.
In an interview last week, MEC chief elections officer Willie Kalonga said donors—whose 40 percent contribution to the K18.4 billion tripartite elections budget was mostly to pay for voting materials—only managed to pump in 22 percent of the pledge.
Donors had committed to pay for the printing of ballot papers, laptop computers, ballot boxes and paying of poll staff.
But, according to the commission, electoral materials came late into the country.
Key electoral materials—ballot boxes, indelible ink and ballot papers—started arriving in Malawi on May 12 2014 for elections slated for May 20.
Even the materials that came were apparently not enough, given that in some polling centres, pails stood in for ballot boxes.
Furthermore, distribution of the materials only started on May 17 2014, three days before polling day.
In an e-mail response to a questionnaire, United Nations (UN) resident coordinator Mia Seppo said the total value of procurement of materials, ballot boxes, indelible ink, printing of the ballots was $3.4 million (about K1.4 billion) against the original MEC budget estimates of $9 million (K3.6 billion), which is nearly 38 percent lower than was planned expenditure on the items.
She said UNDP was also paying honoraria to poll workers using the balance from the original MEC budget estimates for electoral materials.

 
But she stated: “Activities related to procurement were implemented in a timely manner without compromising value for money or quality.”
Seppo explained that development partners— the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfID), the European Union (EU), Norway, Ireland, Japan and UNDP, were also providing coordinated support to MEC through a UNDP managed basket fund.
“Agreement was reached in June 2013 between the Government of Malawi and development partners that government would fund 60 percent of the elections-related costs and development partners up to 40 percent of the budget for the tripartite elections,” she said.
But according to Kalonga, government too fell short.
“I have to check with my finance department on how much government gave us [but] we had a shortfall,” he said.
Kalonga cited shortage of vehicles as one of the major problems that affected the elections, saying the commission did not get the vehicles it asked for.
“People were asking why Blantyre, which was near MEC offices, was affected. The answer was that we had sent all the vehicles away to district councils hoping that they will be back in Blantyre in time and once they are back we will redeploy them, but they delayed; hence, the chaos in Blantyre,” he said.

 
Some centres in three constituencies in Blantyre did not vote on May 20 as the whole nation was casting ballots because materials were not delivered on the date.
However, Treasury spokesperson Nations Msowoya said government gave MEC all the money that Capital Hill was expected to provide as agreed with donors.
“The government’s 60 percent was divided further into two: cash and non-cash. On the aspect of cash, we gave MEC all the money they wanted,” he said.
Msowoya said the money given to MEC was staggered over a period of about two years, but said he could not consolidate the total amount given to MEC.

 
“The Office of the President was handling the non-cash contribution and they would be in a better position to know how much they contributed to MEC,” he said.
Principal Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) responsible for administration Clement Chinthu Phiri, who was chairing the elections transport taskforce, also said the commission was provided with all the vehicles, boats and helicopter they needed for the elections.
“We impounded several vehicles and surrendered them to MEC for their operations. They [had] more vehicles than they needed,” he said.

 
Chinthu Phiri said apart from the vehicles that were identified by the taskforce, councils were also advised to identify vehicles within the districts to help in the distribution of voting materials.
He, however, said the taskforce only identified and located the vehicles to MEC, but did not provide for their fuel of the vehicles. n

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