VP in fresh election battle
Barely two weeks after surviving a court battle with People’s Party (PP) involving the Mzimba South West Constituency election, Vice-President Khumbo Kachali has been dragged into another election battle by the constituency’s former parliamentarian Raymond Nkhata.
Nkhata is challenging Kachali’s lead of 8 254 votes against his 8 160 votes in the parliamentary race in the May 20 Tripartite Elections, claiming there was massive rigging.
He has since complained to Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to disqualify Kachali and conduct a rerun.
However, Kachali in an interview yesterday said: “Any loser makes noise to draw people’s attention”.
He said Nkhata could not compete with him, claiming he is the one who introduced Nkhata to politics.
“No one will accept defeat. It is typical of losers; they do not easily concede defeat. We have had many cases before. People go to court and they just end up losing their money. Courts do not give positions; it is the voters who give positions,” said Kachali.
But Nkhata claimed he has evidence the election was rigged in favour of Kachali.
“I was getting the results from the monitors. I personally did manual computation and I had 8 370 votes while Kachali had 8 171 votes, but I was shocked that the results changed,” said Nkhata.
Mzimba district commissioner (DC) Felix Mkandawire confirmed receiving complaints from Nkhata and some constituents alleging Kachali rigged the election.
