The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) formally launched the September 16 2025 General Elections in August this year but, by then, there were already sticky issues surrounding the use of national identity (IDs) cards and election management device (EMDs).
Section 12 of the Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Elections (PPLGE) Act prescribes the national ID as the sole form of identification for voter registration.
On March 22 2024, immediate past MEC chairperson Chifundo Kachale, a judge of the High Court of Malawi, expressed confidence that there was adequate time to resolve capacity gaps in national ID registration.
But opposition political parties, civil society organisations, governance experts and voters warned that the capacity challenges of the National Registration Bureau (NRB) to issue national IDs may result in millions of eligible voters being disenfranchised in the 2025 elections.
Human Rights Defenders Coalition chairperson Gift Trapence said in May that the slow pace in ID registration would undermine and violate the right to vote for many Malawians.
He said: “We will not tolerate NRB to deny Malawians their right to vote. NRB through the line ministry should make sure that resources are available so that citizens are able to get registered easily.”
NRB spokesperson Norman Fulatira came out to dismiss the concerns, saying the bureau had registered 1.4 million new registrants since June 2023 through its national outreach programme and would conduct mop-up registration to reach out to any remaining individuals.
During the 2025 General Election launch Justice Annabel Mtalimanja, who replaced Kachale in June after the end of his four-year contract, highlighted the commission’s commitment to conduct free, fair, and credible elections.
“As a reminder, the theme is ‘Promoting democratic leadership through your vote.’ This is a call from the commission for everyone to take up our individual responsibility to help advance the democracy of our nation through voting,” she said.
But opposition parties, including UTM Party and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), used the launch to raise fresh concerns on the way registration for national IDs was going on and they demanded that NRB should be present at MEC voter registration centres to register individuals who did not have IDs.
NRB rejected the calls saying the required approval processes for ID registration made such an arrangement difficult. Instead the bureau only committed to deploy staff to conduct ID verification at voter registration centres.
As the voter registration period neared, concerns intensified with opposition DPP threatening to either challenge the ID law in court or lobby legislators to push for an amendment.
The opposition also opposed the use of EMDs in the electoral process fearing that they would enable rigging.
Mtalimanja also faced calls from opposition parties to resign on allegations that she was compromised.
But the MEC chairperson dismissed the resignation calls, saying she was duly chosen by the Judicial Service Commission.
The first phase of the voter registration exercise started on October 21 with the commission using the election management device (EMDs) to register voters.
However, people without national IDs were turned away and asked to first register with NRB at the bureau’s registration centres.
On the same day, the High Court in Blantyre heard an application from five claimants seeking an injunction to stop the operation of Section 12 of the PPLGE Act, saying they were unable to register for IDs hence feared that their right to vote would be suppressed.
In its ruling on the matter on October 25, the court ordered NRB to ensure that it was present at all voter registration centres to register people who showed up without IDs.
In response, MEC committed to redo the first phase of voter registration to accommodate the arrangement.
While the ruling was meant to provide relief for people with no national IDs, spot checks indicated that the NRB failed to fully comply with the court order as it did not deploy officers or biometric registration kits in the first three days of the second phase of the voter registration.
Pan African Civic Educators Network executive director Olive Mpina, whose organisation monitored the registration exercise, said failure by NRB to implement the High Court order amounted to a deliberate effort to disenfranchise potential voters.
“Such actions should not be allowed in any democratic nation,” said Mpina.
Eventually, NRB stationed its officers in some centres during the final days of the second phase and from the beginning of the third phase of voter registration.
On December 1, MEC communications officer Richard Mveriwa told The Nation that the commission was satisfied with the registration exercise as it “tried to reach out to all eligible registrants.”
By the end of the third phase of the voter registration exercise on December 11, MEC had registered 7.1 million people representing 65.3 percent of 10 957 490 potential voters.
The number of registered voters surpassed the 6.8 million that registered for the 2019 Tripartite Elections.
However, opposition parties and election observers still want the commission to redo all voter registration phases because they feel many people have failed to register for the 2025 General Elections.
Time will show if the commission will heed to these calls.
