Moving on after elections
After a major setback, everyone feels the need to move on, but moving on is not as easy as it sounds. For most Malawians who voted in this year’s election, moving on will be particularly difficult. According to the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) official results, 63.4 percent of Malawians did not vote for the candidate who won. That is 3 352 755 people whose hearts ached and whose voices were muffled when MEC announced Peter Mutharika as the winner of the election.
To begin with, this was the longest election in Malawi’s 20-year democracy. People voted over three days and the results took eight days to be released.
Secondly, this was the most hotly contested election, making the loss all the more harder to swallow. Thirdly, this was the most dramatic election to date, moving people’s emotions all over the place over the 10 days or so—feelings of joy at the first signs of victory; then shock at the news of a government official’s suicide; suspicion triggered by news of rigging; fear after Joyce Banda issued a presidential order to nullify the election; curiosity at MEC’s admission of serious irregularities in their figures; hope at MEC’s announcement of a vote recount to verify the results; anger at efforts to block the recount using court injunctions; despair at the court’s incapacity to grant the extra time needed for a vote recount supported by the majority of parties; resignation at the news that MEC had no choice but to announce the results without a manual audit or verification. After all these emotions, many were left exhausted.
Even so, the hardest feeling about the outcome of this election for those whose candidates did not win is the confusion they were left in. The electoral system sent mixed messages, saying in one breath that the results being reported had irregularities serious enough to warrant a manual recount of all votes across the country, while at the same time calling the results credible in the absence of such a recount. The mixed messages from the electoral body had the unintended effect of destroying many people’s confidence in the value of their vote. And whenever an election is conducted in such a way that the voters end up questioning the value of their votes, democracy has scored an own goal.
Similarly, the judicial system confused people by sending a mixed message, refusing to give the People’s Party (PP) an injunction to get MEC to recount votes, then granting the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) an injunction to block MEC from recounting vote, then granting the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) an injunction to vacate the DPP injunction, then later ruling that no injunction against the vote recount should ever have been granted! Another instance of the judicial system’s duplicity is how the court took 48 hours of the electoral cycle to decide whether MEC could go through with its planned recount, only to rule that while MEC does indeed have the power to do a recount, it would not be given the time to get it done. Indeed, the legal system confused people by stipulating laws that give MEC the power to do “whatever it deems necessary” to deliver a credible election result, while at the same time stipulating that an extension of time beyond eight days to verify the results is completely out of the question, meaning that MEC could not really exercise its independence as the law stipulates.
People can cope with losing an election, just as they cope with losing greater treasures like a loved one, a job, a home or a friendship. But what they may not cope with is the loss of trust in the system. In any election, there can only be one winner, but there must be no reason for people to lose confidence in the systems entrusted to facilitate the contest.
Unfortunately, this is the heavy price at which this election has come. As a result, most Malawians are now asking: Is my vote worth casting if the system says it is not worth verifying? Is God worth trusting if He did not answer my prayers for the system to work? Is the system too broken to make progress? There are no easy answers to these questions. But there is hope in the God of the Cross and the Resurrection, for the death of Jesus reminds those who suffer loss that God does not waste a crushing defeat, just as the resurrection of Jesus reminds those who win that God does not despise a victory.
God can participate in an election either to expose evil, or to thwart evil, or to frustrate evil, or to prevent evil, or to do all of the above or another range of purposes altogether. Those whose candidates of choice did not win, do not be so presumptuous as to think that the only thing God has prevented in this election is their candidate’s victory. God is bigger than our victories and our losses.
The author likes to comment on social issues.
