MEC ready to adopt electoral reviews
The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) says it is ready to implement electoral reviews which will help it provide better and efficient future elections.
The commitment comes amid increasing appeals from stakeholders to put in place electoral systems that provide representative election outcomes following the controversy that rocked the May 20 Tripartite Elections.
Speaking in Blantyre during the 2014 elections review meeting for Blantyre District and City councils over the weekend, MEC chairperson of Electoral Services Committee Ambassador Rev Emmanuel Chimkwita-Phiri said the reviews would help his body prepare for the 2019 elections.
He said previous election review meetings were conducted only at national level, as such, there was no opportunity to get reflections at the local or council level.
“There are many challenges and best practices experienced at council level, which may not be well highlighted at national conferences.
“Therefore, the meeting today offers an opportunity for us to share our experiences and recommendations that will contribute to the improvement on organising elections. This is your platform to suggest the reforms or new ways of doing things that will give us better results,” said Chimkwita-Phiri.
He said the commission had adopted an electoral cycle approach to elections starting with the preparations of 2019 elections.
The May 20 polls had a national turnout of 70.1 percent with the percentage of null and void votes dropping from 2.54 percent in 2009 to 1.09 percent.
So far, electoral stakeholders such as National Initiative for Civic Education (Nice) Trust, Institute for Policy Interaction (IPI) and Malawi Electoral Support Network (Mesn) have already conducted their national conferences to review the May 20 polls. n
