To abandon or not to abandon the system? That is the question bothering some people as the country gears up for the September 16 2025 General Election.
With barely four months to polling day, opposition parties and some civil society organisations are relentlessly calling for the repudiation of the Smartmatic Election Management System (EMS), building up pressure on the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) as time ticks.
They hold firm to their scepticism about the trustworthiness of the electoral body to fairly manage the polls with the Dutch technology firm’s hardware and software procured in October 2023.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) secretary general Peter Mukhito said in an earlier interview that since MEC already used the EMDs supplied by Smartmatic to register voters, the opposition parties want the MEC system to be audited to ensure there is no tampering of the system or data. DPP and three other parties have since submitted their scopes of audit of Smartmatic’s information and communications technology platform for the elections.
MEC spokesperson Sangwani Mwafulirwa said in an interview yesterday he could not give the timeframe for the audit because the scope of any audit determines the time required.
The use of Smartmatic devices in the transmission of results in the up-coming elections was hotly debated at the recent two-day Public Affairs Committee All-inclusive Conference in Blantyre where some opposition parties and civil society organisations vowed to do all in their powers to stop MEC from using the technology.
As the conference ended on Wednesday, a consensus on the issue was far from being reached. But the opposition political parties represented in Parliament have also maintained their demand for MEC to allow an independent audit of its information and communications technology platform for the elections if the election technology was to be used.
A Weekend Nation analysis reveals that reaching this far the commission has taken three years and three months to procure the new system.
The process started in March 2022 with a learning visit to the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) whose recommendations were considered by the commission in December 2022.
Among others, the commission resolved the abandonment of the use of Biometric Voter Registration Kits (BVRKs) to migrate to the hand-held (EMDs).
Since then MEC has conducted several activities including engaging all political parties and their presidents, CSOs, media, National Registration Bureau, Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD), ICT experts and other study tours to Zambia.
The process to procure the equipment and the software began and, following an approval from the Public Procurement and Disposal Authority (PPDA), on February 6 2024 a contract was awarded to Smartmatic International from the Netherlands.
Other companies that participated in the bidding process included Aratek Biometric International from Taiwan and Miru Systems from South Korea.
MEC has already procured 6 500 EMDs and software from Smartmatic and all political parties were invited to witness their arrival at Kamuzu International Airport (KIA).
The total budget to conduct the elections is $187 million (over K220 billion) but MEC chairperson Annabel Mtalimanja disclosed three weeks ago it had a deficit of K97.9 billion to fund a potential presidential run-off if no candidate secures 50 percent plus 1 votes.
A legal expert and former president of the Malawi Law Society (MLS) said demanding the withdrawal of the system was not the best option as it has legal implications.
The lawyer, who did not want to be identified, said, for instance, abandoning the system would also affect the polling day as well as providing MEC with ample time for preparation.
“MEC does not have the mandate to change dates for the General Election. So, essentially, that means the matter will have to be referred to Parliament for Constitutional amendment, a process that involves so many steps,” he said.
The country has been holding Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government elections during the third week of May every five years.
However, in October 2020 Parliament amended the Constitution for Malawians to be going to the polls during the third week of September starting with this year’s polls.
Civil Society Elections Integrity Forum (Cseif) chairperson Benedicto Kondowe observed that abandoning the system with four months to the elections would have significant financial, logistical, and political costs.
“Reversing this decision now would mean not only incurring sunk costs but also requiring an urgent and costly search for an alternative system or a reversion to out-dated, manual methods, which are more prone to error and manipulation,” he said.
Beyond financial implications, Kondowe said the withdrawal would “severely disrupt election preparedness” as MEC would be forced into a crisis mode while scrambling to implement a new system under immense time pressure.
“This could compromise the integrity, credibility, and smooth delivery of the elections, undermining public trust in the electoral process and potentially triggering disputes, unrest, and low voter confidence,” he said.
Kondowe has, however, advised that instead of abandoning the system, stakeholders should push for greater transparency in its implementation, oversight from independent bodies, and robust voter education to ensure public confidence.
Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) chairperson Gift Trapence described those advocating for the abandonment as hypocrites because they were consulted and participated in the process before the actual procurement.
Trapence said the advocates for abandonment need to conduct an analysis of the destruction the decision would create if the system was to be abandoned.
“It was procured through a consultative process with stakeholders including political parties. It was also arrived at after getting all approvals from relevant authorities.
“MEC cannot bow down to demands of a few opposition parties because doing so would be acting in contrast to the law which mandates the commission to conduct its business without being forced or under the influence of anyone.
“Therefore, it is not an issue of cost now but the integrity of the electoral process,” said Trapence.
But it is also important for people to understand what the system will be used for, and not.
The system is being used only for voter registration, voter verification and management of candidate nominations and for transmitting results to the tally centre.
It is not for voting and or vote counting as the country’s electoral system remains paper-based with full paper trails and inperson vote tallying at polling centre.
MEC spokesperson Sangwani Mwafulirwa said while the commission cannot hurriedly come up with figures on cost of abandoning the EMS and EMDs, there had been substantial investment in form of funds to procure the system and the gadgets.
He said: “The commission also invested heavily in holding meetings with various stakeholders including political parties, civil society organisations and the media.
However, when asked how long it would take to bring a different system and the legal implications, Mwafulirwa said it would be hard to speculate as that had not been considered.
Opposition parties claim Smartmatic has a record of interfering in elections in countries such as Venezuela, the Philippines, and Kenya.
But in a press statement on October 16 2023, the MEC chairperson argued that after a thorough examination, these claims had been found to lack merit, with no substantiated evidence to support them. MEC has since then maintained the same argument.
The official campaign period for the polls will begin on July 14 2025 and end on September 14 2025 while nationwide voter verification exercise will run from May 13 to 31 2025 in three phases.
