UTM changes tune on fees
Just a week before presentation of nomination papers starts for the May 21 Tripartite Elections, UTM Party has changed tune on its leader Saulos Chilima’s promise that the grouping would pay nomination fees for all its candidates.
In an interview, UTM director of publicity Joseph Chidanti Malunga walked back his boss’s words, claiming this week that what Chilima meant was that the party would pay for those who cannot afford.
This is contrary to what Chilima, who is also State Vice-President, said at Njamba Freedom Park on July 29 2018 during the Southern Region launch of United Transformation Movement—which later registered as UTM Party.
At the time, Chilima said the party would field candidates in all the 193 constituencies and 462 wards and pay for “all of them”.
The Vice-President said: “We will hold a convention and elect a leader to represent the movement. We will also pay for all UTM parliamentary candidates in all 193 constituencies as well as candidates in all councils.”
But in an interview on Thursday, Chidanti Malunga coined the new party tune this way: “Actually, there is no contradiction because what he meant was that we do not want to find ourselves in a situation where we have a good candidate, but who then fails to pay the nomination fees to MEC. He [Chilima] said those who can pay for themselves can do so.
“Right now, we do not have the candidates yet, but after the primaries, then those that fail to pay, the party would do so. However, it is not like everyone will fail to pay because there are some who will pay for themselves, like myself.”
According to the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) nomination fees structure, male aspiring members of Parliament (MPs) will pay K500 000, aspiring female MPs K250 000, youths—those under 35 years—will cough K375 000 while candidates with disabilities will part with K250 000.
In the Local Government elections, male candidates will pay K40 000, females K20 000, youths K30 000 and those with disabilities K20 000. The fees are non-refundable.
UTM’s initial gesture of benevolence would have cost it a maximum of around K114 million if the highest nomination fees for both parliamentary and local government contests were used to compute the tally.
Asked why a party leader would make such a promise and tweak it at the 11th hour, Mzuzu-based political commentator Emily Mkamanga said Chilima may have made the remarks “out of excitement”.
“Maybe he said it out of excitement at the launch of the party. But it would not be easy to practically support every Jim and Jack,” she observed.
MEC will receive nomination papers from candidates from January 4 to February 4 2019.
UTM is set to hold its primaries a day earlier on January 3 2019 in all the constituencies and wards simultaneously—cutting it a little too fine in terms of the electoral calendar.
University of Malawi’s Polytechnic-based political analyst, Chimwemwe Tsitsi, said on Tuesday the party has run out of time, especially when UTM’s major competitors are moving on from the primaries process; hence, the simultaneous primaries make sense.
“When you look at the electoral calendar, whereby MEC will soon be receiving nomination papers with no extension of the exercise, as it already warned parties, one can clearly see that UTM does not have enough time and perhaps in that sense conducting the elections on the same day is a good idea,” he said.
Tsitsi, however, warned the party against imposing candidates on the people as “the will of the people has to prevail”.
The party held its convention this month where Chilima went unopposed on the presidency, alongside 14 others for national executive committee (NEC) positions. Several other key founders of the party did not vie for any NEC position, saying they did not have to be in the NEC to serve the party. n
