PREVIEW
Commission says it has counted 99% of votes although it has not yet published the results
President Lazarus Chakwera and his predecessor Peter Mutharika have been rebuked by the head of the Malawi Electoral Commission after both claimed they had won the 16 September elections.
The commission has confirmed that 99% of votes have been counted with inside sources saying that Mutharika had a slight lead over Chakwera. Pressure was mounting on the commission to release more results over the weekend. Malawi’s electoral law requires the result to be declared within seven days of the election.
‘The commission will not hurry the results management process just because some political party leaders and candidates are piling up pressure,’ said Annabel Mtalimanja, the chair of the commission.
The results are likely to put the country on a knife-edge – opinion polls suggested that no candidate was likely to obtain the 50% plus one needed to avoid a second round run off (AC Vol 66 No 18, Lazarus Chakwera fights to survive).
Five years ago, Chakwera defeated Mutharika in a rerun after the constitutional court threw out the 2019 result.
Ahead of the polls, the received wisdom among pundits was that Chakwera’s prospects would be damaged by the loss of support from the United Transformation Movement (UTM), led by Chakwera's Vice-President, Saulos Chilima – who died in a government plane crash last year – as part of the Tonse Alliance electoral pact. (AC Vol 65 No 19, VP crash pilots ‘lost’).
Former President Joyce Banda, another member of the Tonse Alliance, was also a candidate on 16 September but her People’s Party and the UTM’s Dalitso Kabambe are unlikely to have obtained 10% of the vote between them.
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