Opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and UTM Party insist that they want the Malawi Elec toral Commission (MEC) to use manual transmission of results in the September 16 2025 General Election.
Speaking in separate interviews yesterday, DPP spokes p er son Shadric Namalomba and his UTM Party counterpart Felix Njawala said they trust manual transmission more than digital which they fear can easily be manipulated.
Namalomba said his party’s position on the matter remained as presented in 2024 and would only change if decided by the DPP central executive committee (CEC).
He said: “We maintain our position on manual transmission of election results. We cannot trust the electronic way of doing things. It is in the public domain that Smartmatic International Holding has been implicated in election rigging.”
Njawala, on the other hand, said they are still engaging the commission to push for adoption of the manual system.
“We have never used the electronic system. In 2019/2020 we used the manual system and that is what we want. We have been engaging MEC on this matter,” he said.
Late last year, opposition political parties demanded the resignation of MEC c h a i r p e r son A n na b e l Mtalimanja, chief executive officer Andrew Mpesi and National Registration Bureau (NRB) Principal Secretary Mphatso Sambo for allegedly failing in their duties.
Further, the parties wanted MEC to terminate a contract with Smartmatic International Holding for the supply of election management devices (EMDs) and election system management software but the parties’ efforts to push for these demands proved futile amid foiled demonstrations.
On whether they still stand by these demands, Njawala yesterday said UTM has no issues with the listed MEC and NRB officials provided they are “doing the right thing”.
“We e ng a g ed NRB on challenges facing civil registration in some centres in Mulanje and they responded. What is remaining is the issue of manual transmission of results with MEC,” he said.
Namalomba said their position on the demands still stand, but that the way forward was subject to the outcome of their CEC meeting.
MEC director of media and public relations Sangwani Mwafulirwa had not responded to our questionnaire by press time yesterday.
Bu t i n O c to b e r 2 0 2 4 , MEC rejected requests to have independent ICT auditors to monitor election management systems and conduct manual transmission of election results.
The opposition DPP, United Democratic Front, Alliance for Democracy and UTM wrote MEC to express concerns with the election management system.
Among other things, they asked the electoral body to allow independent ICT auditors to check the MEC system and also have a manual transmission of election results.
But addressing the issue during the National Elections Consultative Forum, Mtalimanja, a judge of the High Court of Malawi, said MEC has no plans to have independent ICT auditors due to security reasons.
On the manual transmission of data that the parties proposed, she is on record as having said that during pilot phase the EMDs successfully transmitted all the data to the commission servers and the servers managed to synchronise all the data received.
