Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) has asked Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to address alleged anomalies and inconsistencies on counting, tallying and transmission of the September 16 General Election results.
In a statement yesterday, HRDC chairperson Gift Trapence also urged the electoral body to investigate allegations of ballot boxes stuffing after voting as alleged by some political parties.
Reads the statement: “MEC should also look at the demand of political parties of doing physical audit of the votes, including verification of the actual ballot papers and votes. This should be done in the presence of political party officials or representative of candidates.
“Some parties have also claimed that the system is compromised, especially on summation of votes from polling centres and are favouring one candidate. Can MEC please publicly show Malawians their summation formulae?”
HRDC’s call comes after Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and United Democratic Front (UDF) filed separate complaints to MEC.
In a petition dated September 18 2025 and signed by secretary general Genarino Lemani, UDF said it was concerned with cases in Balaka, Mangochi, Machinga and Zomba districts.
He said the party was denied official result sheets purportedly because its duly accredited agents were not provided with result sheets as mandated by law.
Lemani further claimed that an undisclosed number of the party’s monitors were directed to leave polling centres and told that they would only be called back after results had been tallied so that they sign result sheets.
Reads the petition: “Numerous reports have been received of incidents where your monitors were intoxicated against their will and/or had their mobile phones confiscated, obstructing their ability to properly execute their oversight duties.
“In addition, we have identified serious discrepancies in the tallying process that fundamentally compromises the integrity of the electoral outcome.”
Lemani said in Machinga South West Constituency the number of votes cast, at 38 111, exceeded the number of registered voters (37 784) by 277 votes.
The MCP, on the other hand, presented similar cases on Mangochi South West and Blantyre Mbayani- Mussa- Magasa constituencies where the figures on the manual tally sheet and the printed tally sheet have different numbers for the presidential vote.
Further, MCP argues that in Nkhotakota Mkhula Constituency, the results shown on the MEC tally sheet are different from the aggregation of the results depicted on the result sheet of every polling station.
The MEC result sheet, according to MCP, shows 15 575 while the physical tally sheet shows 16 200, a difference of 625.
UDF is seeking a recount of the presidential and parliamentary election results in Machinga, Mangochi, Balaka and Zomba.
On his part, MCP SG Richard Chimwendo Banda said the party has made three submissions of complaints to MEC.
“More are on the way, because though MCP is confident of victory, it does not want to win under a cloud of irregularity because that would compromise the credibility of its victory,” he said.
Meanwhile, MEC chairperson Annabel Mtalimanja is on record to have said the electoral body was handling complaints it formally received from political parties and independent candidates.
