Malawi Congress Party (MCP) running mate Vitumbiko Mumba has alleged “widespread and systematic” irregularities in the September 16 General Election purportedly to rob MCP of victory in the presidential race.
Speaking to the media in Lilongwe yesterday, he declared that MCP led by incumbent President Lazarus Chakwera won the election and the party will legally challenge any attempt to alter the outcome.
Mumba, who said he was speaking on behalf of the party’s presidential candidate Chakwera, stated that the allegations of vote fraud are based on evidence by an independent team of party agents, lawyers and forensic experts.
He said: “The findings are very clear, consistent and deeply troubling. They include a forensic comparison of original polling station results forms, agent statements, time stamps, photographs and contemporaneous notes which reveal a logical and traceable pattern of manipulation.”
Mumba also claimed that the results recorded at polling centres do not match the figures Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) announced at the National Tally Centre at Bingu International Convention Centre in Lilongwe.
However, MEC chairperson Annabel Mtalimanja, who has been announcing partial results of the presidential election since Friday, is on record as having stated that the official results the electoral body was publishing were vetted and signed for by representatives of all contesting candidates.
During the briefing, Mumba also said there was a high concentration of null and void ballots in MCP strongholds, claiming that the rate was far above possible error.
“This is not 2014… You cannot bring fists or knives to a drone’s fight. Chakwera won in 2019, he was robbed of victory… but God did not allow it,” he said.
Mumba, who resigned from MCP national executive committee earlier this year, was apparently referring to the 2019 presidential election later nullified by a five-judge panel of the High Court of Malawi sitting as the Constitutional Court following a petition filed by then UTM Party presidential candidate Saulos Chilima as the first petitioner and Chakwera as second petitioner.
The petitioners cited irregularities that included use of correctional fluid, Tippex and prayed for nullification of the election and an order for a fresh election. The court granted both prayers and further interpreted that the victor of the presidential election be determined by 50-percent-plus-one, not first-past-the-post as was previously the case.
During yesterday’s press briefing, MCP publicity secretary Jessie Kabwila echoed Mumba’s sentiments, adding that the will of the people will have to be respected and that the allegations of vote manipulation are enormous.
The party officials also showed journalists some tally sheets which allegedly were tampered with in a number of centres.
MCP secretary general Richard Chimwendo Banda alongside former ministers Vera Kamtukule, Jean Sendeza, Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda and Hetherwick Ntaba were also in attendance, but did not utter a word.
