Malawi’s President Peter Mutharika has taken a clear lead in the May 21 Presidential Election, garnering 75 percent of the vote counted, the Electoral Commission said on Thursday. He has taken 40.44 percent of votes cast, reported Reuters.
The vote counting result so far has put Mutharika ahead of his main rival, former Christian pastor Lazarus Chakwera who has got 35 percent of vote share. The President’s closest ally and Deputy President, Saulos Chilima, has taken 18 percent of the votes, according to the partial results.
Thursday was the second day of vote tabulation which showed results from 3,792 centers out of the 5,002.
“This means we have received 75.81 percent of the total polling centers,” said Malawi Electoral Commission Chairwoman Jane Ansah.
Ansah clarified that this is not a percentage of the total registered voters but the total number of polling centers. She also revealed that two polling staff members were arrested in the lakeshore town of Mangochi in an attempt of manipulating elections results.
Notably, Mutharika, who heads the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is fighting for a second five-year term. His government has been flagged by several high-profile cases of corruption and nepotism.
“It feels excellent,” DDP campaign chief Ben Phiri told AFP news agency commenting on the voting results. “The results are within our predictions but certainly we are not naive enough to celebrate before the final whistle is blown.”
On Wednesday, Chakwera warned of alleged attempts to rig the elections, saying his Malawi Congress Party (MCP) was conducting its own count that showed he was ahead.
Malawi has around 6.8 million potential voters, with more than half aged under 35. There is a ‘first past the post’ system followed in Malawi where whoever gets more votes than the other becomes a winner. In 2014 elections, Mutharika got 36 percent of the votes.
