Malawi’s Opposition Leader Clinches Victory in Election Rerun
Malawi’s Opposition Leader Clinches Victory in Election Rerun
Malawi’s main opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera coasted to victory in a court-ordered election rerun that outgoing President Peter Mutharika alleged was marred by irregularities.
Chakwera secured 58.5% support in the June 23 vote, and Mutharika 34%, tallies released on Saturday by Chifundo Kachale, the chairman of the Malawi Electoral Commission, showed. About 4.4 million people cast ballots.
“We now have a winner,” Kachale said at a ceremony in Blantyre, the commercial capital. “We have resolved all complaints stakeholders filed.”
The Supreme Court of Appeal, the top judicial authority, last month upheld the Constitutional Court’s annulment of a flawed May 2019 vote that handed Mutharika a second five-year term. Chakwera, who was declared runner-up in that vote, then enlisted Saulos Chilima, the nation’s popular vice president who finished third, as his running mate and united the two main opposition parties’ support bases.
Securing a credible vote was a key test for a country the United Nations ranks as one of the world’s least developed after the ruling to scrap the previous result was hailed as a boost for democracy. It was only the second time a presidential vote had been overturned in Africa.
Chakwera, 65, served as president of the Malawi Assemblies of God churches for more than 24 years before being appointed leader of the main opposition Malawi Congress Party in 2013. He holds four degrees, including a theology masters degree from the University of South Africa and a doctorate from the Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois.
The opposition’s campaign pledge to created 1 million jobs within a year of taking office secured it the backing of many young voters, while an undertaking to cut the cost of fertilizer by 80% resonated with subsistence farmers. Chilima, a 47-year-old former telecommunications executive who quit the ruling party in 2018 to protest a perceived failure to clamp down on graft but retained the deputy president’s post because he was directly elected, also helped mobilize support among the youth.
Mutharika, 79, a constitutional law expert who studied at the University of London and Yale, has ruled the landlocked southern African nation since 2014. While he’s been credited with bolstering economic growth, he’s been criticized for not clamping down on graft. The government also shouldered some of the blame for the flawed vote -- which included correction fluid being used to alter results -- and failing to decisively tackle political violence that followed.
Mutharika described the election rerun as the worst in Malawi’s history, but urged citizens not to resort to violence to challenge the outcome.
‘Monitors beaten’
“Our monitors were beaten, hacked, abducted and intimidated so that they should not participate in the voting observation process,” he told reporters in Blantyre on Saturday before the final results were announced. “Many of the tally sheets do not have signatures as monitors were in hospitals and could not be present to endorse results.”
The ruling Democratic Progressive Party indicated that it wouldn’t accept the result after Chakwera took a commanding lead in the vote count. Mutharika hasn’t indicated whether he intends challenging the outcome in court.
The electoral commission had referred the ruling party’s complaints about violence to the police because they were criminal in nature, while it found no merit in allegations about voting irregularities, Kachale said.
Chakwera is expected to be sworn in as the southern African nation’s sixth post-independence president in the capital, Lilongwe, on Sunday.
A nation of 18 million people, Malawi relies on tourism, tea and burley tobacco, a low-quality variety of the leaf, for the bulk of its export revenue. Aid from international donors, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund helps shore up its finances.
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