Dust is refusing to settle on the controversy surrounding the fresh amendment to the electoral law for stiflling the right to vote for certain sections of society.
This time around, Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) has asked President Lazarus Chakwera to withhold signing into law the amended Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Elections Act on the basis that it limits the right to vote enshrined in the Constitution.
The President reconvened Parliament on August 5 2025 after its dissolution on July 23 to consider an amendment to Section 74 of the Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Elections Act to address the concern that eligible voters such as polling staff and party representatives would be unable to vote due to deployment to polling stations away from where they registered.
Parliament passed the amendment, but only accommodated polling staff, security personnel deployed by Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC), representatives of candidates and political parties as special groups.
In an advisory memo to the President dated August 21 2025, MHRC has asked Chakwera to refer the Bill back to Parliament for reconsideration on the basis that it disenfranchises many registered voters by limiting their right to vote to a locality.
Reads the memo in part: “All registered voters, including incarcerated persons, released inmates, essential service providers, elections monitors and observers, including civil society, members and staff of the Human Rights Commission, the media, and internally mobile persons who due to different circumstances are unable to vote at their registered or transferred polling centres, should be given a chance to exercise their right to vote outside their registered centres or centres they transferred as the law was in the repealed Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Election Act of 1993.”
The commission added that the August 5 amendment violated sections 40(3) and 39 of the Constitution by unjustifiably limiting the right to vote to a locality.
MHRC chairperson Chikondi Chijozi-Jere, in an interview yesterday, confirmed that the commission has written the President on the matter.
She said the President must protect the rights of all eligible voters who will be disenfranchised by the current legal framework.
On the practicality of reconvening Parliament now when the general election is barely weeks away, Chijozi-Jere said the President can reconvene Parliament to amend the Act just before September 16 as he did on August 5.
“This is a matter of protecting human rights. As a commission, we are looking at the right to vote under Section 40 of the Constitution, which is accorded to every eligible voter without restrictions so as to the exercise of the right to vote,” she said.
During a stakeholder consultation meeting on the Bill that the Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament held at Parliament on August 4, MEC chairperson Annabel Mtalimanja cautioned against having a broad scope of special categories of voters that should be allowed to vote in centres other than where they registered, arguing that doing so would pose challenges to the electoral body in ensuring credibility of elections.
However, Chijozi-Jere said yesterday that MEC’s concern does not hold as the previous Act of 1993 gave power to the electoral body to allow people to vote at a centre they did not register.
Presidential press secretary Anthony Kasunda said he was yet to see the MHRC letter.
Ministry of Justice spokesperson Frank Namangale also asked for more time to comment on the matter.
Asked what MEC makes of the stand by MHRC considering the electoral body’s previous position, MEC spokesperson Sangwani Mwafulirwa said the commission already presented its views on the matter.
“And we will not comment on the petition because it is not addressed to us,” he said.
Meanwhile, Civil Society Elections Integrity Forum chairperson Benedicto Kondowe has described the MHRC concern as genuine.
In an interview yesterday, he said his forum also raised the same issues when it petitioned the President on ensuring that all eligible voters are able to vote regardless of where they registered.
