MEC holds on to election results

Malawians will have to wait for almost a month to hear the outcome of the presidential result for the May 20 polls, Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) announced yesterday.

MEC chairperson Maxon Mbendera said last evening the electoral body will seek a waiver from the court to extend the eight-day period for announcing results. However, the statement was punctuated with boos and jeers from officials and followers of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Initial unofficial results, later disputed as erroneous due to irregularities, suggested that DPP presidential candidate Peter Mutharika was leading.

DPP members were not amused with Mbendera’s statement that MEC would do the recount while being monitored and also his apparent failure to address a question from a journalist on how secure the ballot boxes were.

The DPP officials interjected Mbendera’s statement and some were overheard saying: “Just give the presidency to whoever you want.”

But Mbendera, in a situation that was getting out of hand, remained calm as governing People’s Party (PP) officials and their partners in the fight, opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) officials, cheered him on by clapping hands.

Earlier, Mbendera, who is a judge of the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal, said MEC had by last evening entered presidential results from almost 95 percent of polling centres.

He said MEC would not start announcing the results, adding the process in progress would take almost a month.

Mbendera, who was accompanied by MEC commissioners, earlier on said there have been a number of court injunctions over the ongoing tally process which have been supported and then countered in the courts by political parties over the possibility of the MEC verifying the vote count.

The MEC chairperson said the electoral body had put information from all polling centres in nine districts which are Chitipa, Rumphi, Likoma, Balaka, Machinga, Zomba, Mwanza, Neno and Thyolo.

He said MEC was auditing and verifying the records and were addressing any related complaints.

Mbendera disclosed that MEC had registered 275 complaints of which 170 of them had already been responded to.

He said the controversial case of Machinga North East Constituency which received wide circulation in the media, was investigated. It had been reported that the constituency tallied 184 223 cast votes while the number of registered voters was less than 40 000.

Mbendera said after investigations, it transpired that the figures presented for the constituency of Machinga North East, were in fact the results provided for the district and was a simple mistake where a wrong form was used.

He said on more serious issues, MEC’s auditing processes had identified that in 58 polling centres, more valid votes had been cast than the number of registered voters assigned.

He said MEC is charged with the duty of ensuring a free and fair election, adding the legitimacy of the nation’s future leadership depended on those efforts.