The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) Chairperson Justice Dr. Jane Ansah on Friday said the commission was not ready to hold fresh presidential elections on 19 May 2020.
On 3rd February this year, High Court sitting as Constitutional Court sitting nullified May 2019 Presidential elections and ordered MEC to hold fresh polls within 150 days from the day of verdict and parliament resolved to conduct the polls on 19 May.
Speaking during the National Elections Consultative Forum in Blantyre on Friday, Dr. Ansah said the commission will not use electoral amendment bill but rather constitution court order.
“We will not be ready by the 19th of May because this date is coming in the amendment but what we know is the 150 days that the court has given because the amended law is not law, so we cannot use it at the moment but when it becomes law, we will use it and see how best we can have it,” said Dr Ansah.
Commenting on the matter a legal expert, Justin Dzonzi said: “The period within which the elections must be held was set by the court which was the 150 days.
“The determination of a specific date was made by Parliament and because that specific date is a matter of law, it cannot take effect until the President has assented to that bill,”
Meanwhile, Malawi President Professor Peter Mutharika has vowed to reclaim victory.
we were not consulted by our mps on the amended laws, they have to consult us first rather than act in a hurry to appease m’busa wachifwamba. acts like these, are comfirming that the bloody reverend will have all our constitution changed, gagging even chilima and our presidential aspirations. malawians be more careful.
MEC are in this situation because of arrogance, if they had started the election preparations as soon as the concourt gave the ruling they would not have been in the situation they are in now.
But because mai Madando in her capacity as Supreme Court judge thought that she is smarter that the concourt judges and therefore she will be able to stop the ruling in its tracks. The truth of the matter is that MEC has only started preparing for the elections last week after the Supreme Court ruling not to give them the stay order they had applied for.
All I can say now is this, if anything goes wrong with the upcoming elections in May the blame will lay squarely on the MEC chair. She has been making decisions on her own taking advantage of the incompetence of the other commissioners because of her background as a judge.
On one hand she is telling us that the MEC are preparing for the May elections and on another hand she is spending K600 million of tax payers money trying to stop the same election her organisation is preparing for, where exactly are her interests?
Is this not the reason why people want her to resign so that new leadership with no conflict of interest should lead the organisation to prepare for the elections? Why is she clinging to her position when her employers, the Malawi taxpayers don’t want her, what point is she trying to prove. Last time she fooled Malawians in believing that she will resign if the concourt find MEC wanting, but she never did, and now she want to waste even more taxpayers money by hiring foreign lawyers just to try to save her face.
My last message to mai Madando is this, in 1915 when white colonialists masters thought that Malawians are so docile and passive, Livingstone was slaughtered one night in cold blood. In 1994 when the MCP thought that Malawians cannot vote for multiparty politics, that is exactly what Malawians, voted for.
If Mai Madando thinks that after all the mess she has caused our country to go through like, messing up our election in 2019 for the love of money, the damages to property caused by riots due to her refusal to resign, the taxpayers money wasted in courts to defend the indefensible, and her shear arrogance in the face of Malawians that all this shall go unpunished then she is making a very big mistake.
After all this is said and done my advice to mai Madando is that leave our country as soon as possible to enjoy your blood money elsewhere on planet earth. Because as long as I live I will make sure that mai Madando after all the damage she has cause to our country should never live in peace to enjoy her blood money within the borders of our country.
We have people dying in hospitals due to lack of medicine and yet she has the audacity of spending millions to appeal the concourt ruling for personal reasons. If democracy is not cheap why can she not let the elections to go ahead without wasting more money on appeals?
Koma zilikoliko chaka chake ndi chino tiziona sitinati.