National News

MEC urges stakeholders to move people to register

Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) commissioner Emmanuel Fabiano has expressed concern with the low turnout of registrants in the supplementary voter registration, urging electoral stakeholders to rally people to participate in the exercise.

Speaking yesterday during an inspection of voter registration centres in Lilongwe, the commissioner said encouraging eligible voters to register for the September 16 General Election should be a concern to everyone and not just MEC.

Fabiano: It is a fact there is low turnout. | George Singini

Phase One of the supplementary registration exercise ran from Tuesday to Wednesday, and during the tour, the commissioner established that there was low turnout of potential registrants.

At one of the centres at Njewa Primary School in Lilongwe Kumachenga Constituency, MEC projected to register 170 people but only one person had registered by the time of the inspection. M’bwatalika Primary School, also in Lilongwe, only registered six out of an expected 200 while at Bwaila Secondary School in Lilongwe City Bwaila Constituency had one registrant out of 35 expected voters had registered by the time of the inspection yesterday.

However, the supervisors in the centres indicated that they had sent back a number of people that did not qualify for the supplementary registration.

Fabiano said: “As the supplementary registration continues in other areas, there is need for collaborative efforts to ensure that more eligible voters register. “

He said although MEC is yet to establish the reasons for the low turnout, everyone should be concerned when a person decides not to register to vote.

Fabiano also expressed concern that most political parties were not sending monitors to registration centres, with only Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) having monitors on the ground. In some centres, there was just one monitor, either MCP or DPP.

But in separate interviews, some opposition parties said they are not surprised with the low turnout of potential voters, saying people are frustrated after MEC declined to conduct a supplementary registration that would accommodate everyone that was left out in the initial exercise.

Alliance for Democracy (Aford) spokesperson Annie Amatullah said the party and others in opposition do not support the ongoing supplementary registration exercuse, saying it is not what the parties asked for.

On his part, United Democratic Front (UDF) spokesperson Dyson Jangia said as much as the low turnout is an issue of concern, MEC is to blame for failing to accommodate all that were left out in the registration exercise.

“We anticipated this. The whole exercise is no longer exciting,” he said.

According to MEC, the supplementary registration targets individuals who were eligible but could not register for the vote because the National Registration Bureau (NRB) had not deployed staff to centres, and who subsequently registered with NRB by January 4 2025, which was the last date for the supplementary civil registration.

The Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Elections Act prescribes the national ID card or a registration notification slip issued by the NRB as the sole form identification for one to register as a voter.

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