Chakwera calls for law that regulates Presidential Transition: US’s lesson for Malawi

Leader of opposition and Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president Lazarous Chakwera is calling for an enactment of the law that prescribes modalities for the peaceful transition of power between outgoing and incoming administrations.

Chakwera said the transition of power in the United States between President Barrack Obama to the new leader Donald Trump should be lesson for Malawi to start a transition programme through to the orderly inauguration of the new president.

Normally in Malawi the inauguration of the President is rushed through.

“We should pass the legislation that regulates a transition of power and inauguration of the president after elections,” Chakwera said on Monday on Daybreak Malawi program aired by Capital Radio.

He said the law should prescribe modalities for the peaceful transition of power between outgoing and incoming administrations, saying there shouldn’t be disorderly take over.

Government spokesman and Minister of Information, Nicholous Dausi said indeed Malawi has to learn from advanced democracies such as the process of transferring power.

“Our democracy is still in infancy stage we have a lot to learn,” said Dausi on Daybreak Malawi.

He said US showed the way things should be after an election.

“All former presidents were together; I think that’s how it should be. I think as a country, we can learn. First of all is to accept results [of the elections] and then move on and develop together,” said Dausi.

Nonetheless, Chakwera is demanding “a transparent way of managing elections.”

MCP is also advocating for Malawi to adopt a 50-plus-one system of electing a President from a first-past-the-post.

Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chairperson Jane Ansah who is a judge of the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal, said proposed electoral reforms currently being scrutinised by a Special Law Commission would address some of the challenges of the previous elections, and most recently the May 20 2014 Tripartite Elections which was marred by anomalies at voter registration and verification stages as well as at some polling stations when it came to tallying cast votes.