…inflates total number of voters
The trust problems plaguing the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) seems to persist ahead of the elections in September. The latest is where the Commission was caught inflating the total number of registered voters in its recent statement.
In a release on Friday, July 11, the Annabel Mtalimanja led Commission announced that Malawi had registered a total of 7,203,390 for the September election. This was against a projected target of 10,957,490 votes. The statement, which was signed by Chief Elections Officer Andrew Mpesi whose appointment was challenged in courts to no avail by opposition parties, indicated that only 65.7% of the projected target were registered.
On Saturday, the MEC met with political party leaders to present the information. It was at the meeting that some anomalies were recognised in the numbers. MEC had inflated the total number of registered voters by at least a 100 more people. This forced them to backtrack on their earlier statement, issuing out a new statement apologising for the signifcant mathematical error.
In a Facebook post, the election managament body wrote “We are re-sending the statement to supersede the one sent yesterday because there was a typing error regarding the total number of registered voters. The correct total is 7,203,390 and not 7,203,490 as previously indicated.”
The message was that accompanied with a new statement that was equally signed by Mpesi.
The Malawi Electoral Commission has come under fire owing to what is regarded as its partisan approach to issues. A few weeks ago, protests were organised against the Commission but were disturbed by men wielding pangas suspected to have been sent by the ruling party.
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