MCP claims Chakwera won election
Malawi Congress Party (MCP) says its tally centre shows that the party’s presidential candidate Lazarus Chakwera was leading in the May 20 presidential elections as opposed to earlier unofficial media reports and Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) preliminary results indicating otherwise.
This emerged at the press briefing Chakwera addressed with his party officials at the party’s headquarters in Lilongwe last night before the MEC announced that it would physically recount the election results.
Chakwera’s brief statement said the party had lodged several queries with MEC concerning anomalies and discrepancies in the counting of the presidential votes.
He was accompanied by his running mate and party vice president Richard Msowoya, secretary general Gustav Kaliwo and spokesperson Jessie Kabwila who said the party was dismayed with media reports suggesting that Chakwera was coming second in the presidential election.
Msowoya wondered how MCP, which was indicated to have won 76 seats in Parliament, could have lost the presidency.
The party officials demanded that MEC let political parties verify the preliminary elections results it released on Friday night.
Chakwera please do not allow to be used by desperate people in the party. Wait until MEC has announced its results officially then launch a formal complaint. Take your tally and that of MEC and see where the discrepancies are. The argument that because the MCP is leading in the number of MPs therefore it should lead in the presidential vote is deeply flawed since independent aspirants have unofficially won seats in MCP strongholds.
Life Chakwera has a point. Normally there is a direct relationship between winning the presidency and number of MPs the party representing the winner of presidency accumulates. Both are based on a popular vote. If it is different then the variance should not have been seventy something vs 44. One would have expected that the number of votes DPP presidential candidate shouldn’t be materially different from what UDF accumulated. By the same token the votes accumulated by amai as presidential candidate are not consistent with number of seats her party won. It’s obvious Udf, Pp, and udf split the votes in southern region whereas Mcp overwhelmingly accumulated a lot of votes in central region which is very populous. They were the ones that won. That’s why DPP are uncomfortable with a recount. I am thinking aloud that probably they used same tricks in 2009 and they may have not truly had a landslide victory. Good it will be revealed and similar tricks may not be successful in future elections
Chindere, i think it’s very possible for a party to win the presidency and yet lose the parliamentary elections and vice versa. simple example would be if you beat me by 1 vote in each of the 76 constituencies and I beat you by 2 votes in each of the 44 constituencies. I will be the winner. The recount should tell us who won though. The first step was to get rid of PP which has been successfully done. They were taking Malawians for granted which should be the lesson for whoever legitimately wins between the two real Doctors, Mutharika and Chakwera.
DPP is distancing itself from supporting a recount…I wonder why ?
There is a conspiracy to stop DPP win. Now I understand the purpose of a meeting Chakwera had with JB in March