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Malawi's Mutharika Wins Re-Election as Court Blocks Recount

Malawi Leader Mutharika Wins New Term as Court Blocks Recount

(Bloomberg) -- Malawi’s incumbent president, Peter Mutharika, narrowly won a second five-year term after a court overturned an opposition injunction against the release of results from May 21 elections.

Mutharika, the leader of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, secured 38.6% support in the first-past-post race, while Lazarus Chakwera, who heads the main opposition Malawi Congress Party, got 35.4%, Malawi Electoral Commission Chairwoman Jane Ansah told reporters in Blantyre, the commercial capital, on Monday.

Saulos Chilima, who was Mutharika’s deputy in the previous administration and quit the DPP last year in protest at the government’s perceived failure to clamp down on graft, won 20.2% backing. Everton Chimulirenji, Mutharika’s running mate, will be the new deputy president.

Mutharika, 78, an international and constitutional law expert who studied at the University of London and Yale and taught at Rutgers University, has said he will put the southern African nation on the path to becoming a middle-income country by 2030. He’s targeting economic growth of 7% over each of the next five years and plans to spend $3.5 billion over the period on transport, energy and other infrastructure projects, while mobilizing a further $9 billion from private investors.

Corruption Scandals

The opposition had hoped to capitalize on widespread public anger over several corruption scandals in one of the world’s least-developed nations, while Mutharika pinned his re-election campaign on the progress he has made in bolstering the economy, improving infrastructure and containing inflation.

The opposition secured a court order last week delaying the release of the election results, after alleging that vote counting had been fraudulent across the country. The High Court overturned that ruling on Monday, allowing the electoral commission to declare Mutharika the winner.

While some Mutharika supporters took to the streets of Blantyre to celebrate his victory, MCP backers have staged protests in the party’s strongholds in the center of the country. The MCP will comment on the way forward after it has evaluated the official results, its spokesperson Maurice Munthali said by phone.

Chilima’s United Transformation Movement also still had to meet to decide on its next course of action, but its concerns about the election’s legitimacy remain, its spokesman Joseph Malunga said.

The DPP secured 62 of the 193 National Assembly seats in a parliamentary vote, while the MCP won 55 and the UTM four, the electoral commission announced on May 25. Independent legislators won 55 seats.

To contact the reporter on this story: Frank Jomo in Blantyre at fjomo@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gordon Bell at gbell16@bloomberg.net, Mike Cohen

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