Election too close to call
Randomly dispatched unofficial results over the past two days show that the battle for State House was between Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Peter Mutharika and Malawi Congress Party’s (MCP) Lazarus Chakwera with less than 30 percent of the votes counted.
The other two contenders—incumbent President Joyce Banda of the People’s Party (PP) and Atupele Muluzi of the United Democratic Front (UDF) – were on third and fourth positions respectively.
But the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC)—which was on Wednesday battling a fresh problem of a bogged down electronic results transmission system after smarting from delayed opening of polling centres on Tuesday—said it would only start releasing official results after the National Tally Centre in Blantyre received at least 30 percent of the vote cast from district tally centres.
“At the moment, the results we have received are not anywhere in the neighbourhood of 30 percent,” said MEC chairperson Maxon Mbendera at 10.30am briefing yesterday.
He added that the second announcement would be made when about 70 percent of the results were in.
In the results randomly announced by official election broadcasters, Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) and Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) television channel, Mutharika had a slight lead over Chakwera yesterday morning, but by afternoon, the MCP leader appeared to have a slender edge.
Later in the day, MEC chief elections officer Willie Kalonga, in an interview to explain the delays affecting announcement of the official results, said the electronic system was not functioning to receive data from districts.
“The system is refusing to take the information from the ground where our data clerks are stationed to send the results,” said Kalonga. “We are now looking at the possibility of using manual transmission of results.”
This, he said, would entail that results in the nearby places would be ferried to the National Tally Centre by vehicles, while those in far-flung areas would be scanned and sent by fax or email.
DPP director of elections Kondwani Nankhumwa said his party would take a position once Mbendera officially announced the changes to the mode of transmitting results.
PP spokesperson Ken Msonda said MEC should ask all radio stations to stop announcing the unofficial results until the problem of transmission had been resolved.
Said Msonda: “Why are they still allowing the announcement of unofficial results when they are unable to confirm those results? They are creating a lot of speculation, which is not healthy.”
He said his party was not concerned about the mode of transmitting the results as long as they are correct and credible.
According to the unofficial results, Mutharika was scoring with wide margins in his Southern Region stronghold while Chakwera was polling significantly in many districts of his party’s Central Region base.
Incumbent President Joyce Banda of PP was scoring highly in the Northern Region with United Democratic Front (UDF) candidate Atupele Muluzi performing fairly well in the Eastern Region districts of Zomba, Machinga and Mangochi.
