In a historic turn of events, the Electoral Commission in Malawi has announced that Malawians are set to make a return to the polls on July 2nd, 2019, for a presidential election rerun ordered by the country’s Constitutional Court. Prior to this announcement, the court had annulled the results of last year’s elections on the basis of irregularities within the electoral process.
“Following the Constitutional Court ruling on February 3 that nullified the presidential elections and ordered that there should be fresh elections, the commission… therefore announces that the elections will be held on 2nd July,” Electoral Commission Chief Jane Ansah stated in a news conference.
Last month, the Constitutional Court overturned the outcome of the country’s May 2019 elections, which handed President Peter Mutharika a second term. This makes it the first time a presidential election has been challenged on legal grounds in Malawi since it gained independence in 1964 and only the second election result to be cancelled in Africa after the 2017 Kenyan presidential vote.
Citing the “massive” use of corrective fluids on tally sheets, the Court declared that the polls were fraught with widespread irregularities, ordering fresh polls within 150 days – a ruling Mutharika is currently appealing with a Supreme Court hearing set for April 15.
President Mutharika, who was declared the winner with just 35.8 per cent of the vote last year, has so far refused to sign off proposed electoral law amendments that would require candidates to obtain more than a 50 per cent majority of the votes to secure a win. In response to this, Ansah has stated that if the president does not approve the new laws before the polling date, the electoral commission would press ahead and organise the elections on the basis of existing laws.
Ahead of the upcoming polls, two of the country’s main opposition parties, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and the United Transformation Movement (UTM) signed an electoral alliance at a ceremony in the country’s capital of Lilongwe, last week, in a bid to boost their chances.
