22 parties collect nomination forms

At least 22 political parties have so far collected nomination forms to contest in the presidential, parliamentary and local government elections on May 20, a far cry from the 54 registered parties in the country.

Among the parties that plan to field a presidential candidate is Alliance for Democracy (Aford) amid court wrangles emanating from the convention which controversially-elected Enoch Chihana as president and talk of an alliance with People’s Party (PP).

Aford secretary general Khwauli Msiska said the party had no candidate yet and would wait for the court cases to be concluded in court before they present nomination papers to Mec.

“As soon as our internal issues are resolved, we will have a clear position.” he said.

According to information gathered from the Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD), which has been mandated to hand out nomination forms to political parties who show interest, about 1 935 forms for the parliamentary race and 4 473 for the local government race have been collected.

The 16 presidential candidates, if validated by the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) after February 14 2013 will have broken a record if they all vie for the seat of president of Malawi.

The 1 935 potential candidates for the parliamentary seat are expected to vie for 193 seats in the August House while 4 473 are expected to contest for the local government elections.

Only PP, Malawi Congress Party (MCP), United Democratic Front (UDF) and Democratic Progressive Party have collected forms to field one presidential candidate, 193 parliamentary candidates and 462 councillors.

Other parties are Republican Party (RP), Malawi Democratic Party (MDP) and United Independent Party (UIP) led by Helen Singh.