Ansah resigns as MEC chairperson: Pens Malawi leader

The embattled Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chairperson Jane Ansah  has disclosed that she has resigned from her position and has written  President Peter Mutharika as the appointing authority informing him about her decision.

Ansah revealed this on Thursday evening  in an exclusive television interview with public broadcaster  Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC)

However, Ansah said she is yet to get a response from President Mutharika.

“But I believe  he respects my decision,” said Ansah, a judge of the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal.

Ansah also said her decision to resign stems from a fact that  Supreme Court upheld the  High Court sitting as the Constitutional Court  ruling annulling the May 2019 presidential elections and faulted MEC   to have been mismanaged the polls.

“I leave full of confidence. I have worked with clean hands and I have no skeletons in my cupboard. I have fought a good fight and I am happy that I have seen it to the end,” she said.

Ansah said she was not moved by demonstrations against her which where organised by Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC), saying they were acts of lawlessness.

“The right to demostrate has a limitation because the constitution says demos must be peaceful, the demos were not peaceful and ceased to be a right. I could not budge to demostrations (lawlessness) because that would have set a very bad precedence,”’said Ansah.

Justice Jane Ansah.

On April 1 2020 MEC chief elections officer Sam Alfandika told Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee that the commission wrote President Mutharika to consider hiring new commissioners as the current ones’ tenure is expiring on June 5.

Legal scholars have since asked Mutharika to enhance the credibility of the  forthcoming presidential election by replacing the commissioners.

Garton Kamchedzera, a professor of law at Chancellor College, a constituent college of the University of Malawi, said under the circumstances, it is in the best interest of Malawians for the President to appoint a new commission.