The Constitutional Court of Malawi on Monday nullified the May 2019 presidential election that declared Peter Mutharika as the winner citing large-scale vote manipulation, reported Reuters.
The Democratic Progressive Party’s Mutharika, Malawi’s president since 2014, won the election with 38.6 percent of the vote. MCP leader Mr. Lazarus Chakwera got 35.4 percent of the vote, while former Vice President Saulos Chilima of UTM got 20 percent votes.
The electoral commission had declared Mutharika as the winner despite complaints from opposition parties of irregularities including results sheets with sections blotted out or altered with correction fluid.
But, Mutharika’s rivals Chakwera and Chilima rejected the results and filed a petition to the High Court requesting it to nullify the results.
The High Court’s panel of five judges issued a 500-page ruling that detailed a raft of irregularities, including the widespread use of correctional fluid to alter figures, duplicate result sheets, and unsigned tally forms. The judge’s raised question on the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) describing its conduct as “very lacking and demonstrated incompetence.”
The court ruled that President Mutharika was not duly elected and called for fresh elections within 150 days.
“It is almost impossible to have an election free of irregularities,” said Justice Healey Potani. “However, in the present matter our finding is that the anomalies and irregularities have been so widespread, systematic and grave such that the integrity of the result was seriously compromised, and can’t be trusted as the will of voters of the May 21, 2019 election.”
The court also directed Parliament to consider recalling the current electoral body, which is headed by the Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Jane Ansah, to “ensure smooth conduct of fresh elections.”
Malawi became just the second African nation to nullify presidential election results and call for a rerun after Kenya’s High Court overturned the outcome of a 2017 vote.
