Chairperson of the Malawi Electoral commission, Justice Maxon Mbendera, on Wednesday said amid the May 20 election standoff, he had reports that Malawi Defence Forces had been instructed to storm the national tally centre at Comesa Hall in Blantyre in order to force the recount of the ballot. Mbendera made the revelation in an exclusive interview with Times Television.The Mec chair said he refused to yield to the reports and to the subsequent presidential decree ordering the annulment of the ballot altogether. “I took the decree with a sober heart as would do any Malawian. It would have been a coup d’état for the president to declare an election null and void. “The law is very clear that elections shall be held on the third Tuesday of May in the fifth year of parliament and therefore it was uncalled for that anyone should order that. “In any case the powers to do that rest in the court who could order a recount. In any case the reports could disturb our data tabulation processes and I had to calm the staff that nothing would happen,” he said. He said there was another report that some political parties were planning to wreak havoc in the country since their parties were losing in the preliminary results, a development which he said put the Mec staff under panic. He said this may have emanated from suspicion that he was anti-People’s Party as prior to the elections he was summoned to meet the president who inquired on the same. “She claimed there was an intelligence report that I was going to vote for the Malawi Congress Party and that I donated cash amounting to K100, 000 to his [MCP presidential candidate] account for campaign purposes. I told her that it did not matter to me as to who would win and then I made up a decision to go and cast my vote,” he said. Mbendera also reported that some of the commissioners signed a note saying the elections were flawed only because they had been pressured by their respective political parties. “That was so because political parties were giving pressure to the commissioners to mount that action and so was the case because it was the first time for most of them to preside over the election of such a magnitude. “At the end of the day we must realise we are all humans and there could be an error as has been the case in elections elsewhere on the continent. I believe one must work in a public office in respect to the law no matter what forces do,” he said. The May 20 elections were riddled with a variety of irregularities, various post-election reports have said. Among them include the postponement of polling in some centres in Blantyre and in Lilongwe leading to the extension of the voting beyond a single day and delay by the Mec to announce official results. The irregularities have been the basis for some political parties to claim the elections were rigged, an observation which Mbendera, the Malawi Electoral Support Network (Mesn) and the European Union Election Observer team, among other electoral players, have dismissed.
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 19:28:19 +0000
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