Two possibilities come up when a middle-class fellow of my age tells you he stays in Nyambadwe, Blantyre. It is either he still lives with his rich and protective parents or he rents a boys-quarter of, perhaps, a wealthy.
Just like Chimaliro in Mzuzu or Area 10 in Lilongwe, Nyambadwe is not a home of feeble and scrawny pockets.
The low-density paradise is neat, designed and sprawling, an earthly heaven for the rich and, most importantly, the powerful. Power lives here.
That is why, for a literal scholar like me, when a ballot box, with voted ballot papers, was found dumped along the streets of Nyambadwe last week Wednesday, the image of power relations in the [mis]management of May 20 Tripartite Elections comes out promiscuous.
In dumping that ballot box, the powerful and the rich were only sending a strong message to Maxon Mbendera and the entire nation that they, too, are managing this election from their mansions. And they sent it well.
In fact, that was not the only message. It is just one of the many messages they have been sending through bloated electoral figures, manipulated ballot boxes, injunctions and counter-injunctions.
The sum of these messages has been complete suffocation of MEC’s legal mandate to hold a credible election—something which has put the entire electoral process to serious question. You just cannot believe anything coming out of this election.
And Mbendera, in his fancy and flamboyant English, goes public saying these elections were ‘credible’. Really? Ideally, in the strict Oxford dictionary definition of ‘credible’, Mbendera would make sense.
But elections are not held within the scope of dictionary. They are held in far-flung M’baluku in Mangochi where figures are bloated and such cases, not dictionary definitions, are potent pointers in defining a credible or an incredible election.
Much so, Mbendera’s line of thought does, again, provide potent suspicion of deeper rifts in the organisation he is leading.
Commissioner Reverend Chimkwita-Phiri, at an earlier press conference which Mbendera did not attend, told the patient nation that ‘they have uncovered massive irregularities and they will do the recount of votes’. Commissioner Nancy Tembo, too, attested to that.
Now here is a commission that sits, deliberates and finds massive electoral irregularities and, in its wisdom, recommends doing a recount. Where is electoral credibility, then, in a vote needing a recount? Incredible!
With these conflicting gestures, MEC is actively participating in subjecting itself to serious question.
In my depth of understanding, this election has been a sham—a complete sham. Let me repeat: a sham. And again: a sham. A sensible nation should not have tolerated debating a recount or not. The debate should have been: should we recount or rerun?
But whatever happens, walls of history are watching every episode as it unfolds. Those behind the current mess shall be known.
