Ansah defiant amid quit calls at Malawi Electoral Commission

Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chairperson Jane Mjojo Ansah is defiant not  to  accept calls for her to stand down from her position at the pollster fir presiding over  a “fraudulent” the May 21 Tripartite Elections.

Several stakeholders have said that the election results “lack credibility”.

The Human Rights Defenders Coalition ( HRDC), has since  called for the immediate resignation ofAnsah, Judge of Supreme Court of Appeal, saying she and her commission are “compromised”.

But the embattled  MEC chairperson will not abdicate her office, according the commission’s spokesperson Sangwani Mwafulirwa.

“The chairperson is not resigning,” said Mwafulirwa in quotes reported by Times newspaper.

He added: “It is high time HRDC stopped behaving as self-appointed authority for public officers. There is overindulgence from this clique to call on resignation or firing of public servants unnecessarily even on matters they don’t have connoisseurship [on].”

HRDC chairperson Timothy Mtambo said Ansah must step  down in the next two weeks ( 14 days) from 4 th June, 2019.

Mtambo warned that rights activist would use “all legally acceptable means and actions” at their disposal after the 14 days against Ansah if she fails to resign.

“We find your approach and altitude in handling electoral stakeholders’ complaints about the results management component of the 2019 tripartite elections, scandalous and unacceptable,” reads HRDC letter signed by its chairperson Mtambo and his deputy Gift Trapence and four other regional chairperson – made available to Nyasa Times.

However, during the announcement of the presidential results, Ansah said MEC gave all political parties scanned results sheets from polling stations so that they can also cross-check with their monitors.

Both Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and UTM Party are challenging the election results and have since gone to court to seek a rerun of the poll.