MEC attributes apathy to poor civic education
Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chairperson Chifundo Kachale has attributed the recurring voter apathy in the country’s by-elections participation in voter and civic education exercise.
He said this yesterday in Lilongwe during the official declaration of winners in Tuesday’s by-election in three constituencies and one ward.
Kachale, who is a judge of the High Court of Malawi, said there were 87 271 voters in all the three constituencies and one ward of whom 42 253 turned out for polling, representing 48.42 percent.
Total valid votes cast were 41 828 and total null and void votes were 425, representing 1.01 percent.
Kachale expressed concern that civil society organisations, including the National Initiative for Civic Education (Nice) Trust, were absent during the by-elections but ever present during general elections.
He said: “It should be stated that the law makes voter education continuous. Therefore, it is our expectation that the civil society and their development partners migrate to the electoral cycle philosophy and conduct civic and voter education throughout the electoral cycle instead of when there are general elections taking place.”
In 2019 Dedza Central East Constituency had 29 381 registered voters who rose to 29 630 in the by election, but a total of 17 021 turned up for polling. This represents 57.45 percent voter turnout.
Nkhotakota North East Constituency in 2019 had 22 632 registered voters who rose to 25 225 in the by-elections, but 10 932 voters turned up for polling.
Mzimba East Constituency had 18 990 voters in 2019 but the figure dropped to 18 833 registered voters in the by-elections. However, 10 571 voters turned up for polling.
In the final results, Kachale declared Joshua Malango of Malawi Congress Party (MCP) as winner of Dedza Central East Constituency with 6 266 votes trailed by independent candidate Solomon Mkomba Kachitsa with 5 992.
In Nkhotakota South East Constituency, Overstone Kondowe (MCP) won with 6 742 votes trailed by Aisha Silver of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) with 1 930 votes.
While Wachepa Phiri of Alliance for Democracy (Aford) won the Mzimba East Constituency and Chimwalira Ward in Balaka South Constituency went to Osman Sani Mapira of DPP.
Rea cting to poor performance of the UTM Party, spokesperson Frank Mwenifumbo congratulated the winners and said the party will go back to the drawing board to analyse what went wrong.
He said the party ’s primary observation is that people love material things when deciding who to vote for than electing leaders based on development issues that are tabled during campaign.
MCP spokesperson Reverend Maurice Munthali said the party is achieving success because of the prevalent good leadership of President Lazarus Chakwera.
He said the outcome of the by-elections is a vote of confidence in the leadership.
“We are not [in government] to please ourselves but to serve Malawians. We may have our problems but they cannot be worse than the previous administration which was riddled with corruption and nepotism,” said Munthali.
University of Malawi political analyst Mustafa Hussein said MCP is gaining numerical strength in Parliament by ably utilising its power as a lead party in the Tonse Alliance government
