Chakwera says MCP to commence legal action against MEC, NRB on ‘voter registration fraud’

Malawi Congress Party (MCP) is  demanding auditing of voters rolls of  Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC)  and data based on National Registration Bureau (NRB)   alleging that it is being tampered with ahead of July 2 fresh presidential elections.

MCP presidential hopeful Lazarus Chakwera  told a news conference at the party headquarters in Lilongwe on Wednesday that  MEC ‘s voters roll  has been  contaminated  a “fake portal” which  contains of about 7 000 children not eligible to vote.

Chakwera said that to ensure that the voters’ roll is clean; the party will ask the court to intervene so that MEC data is disclosed.

He said MCP will not accept MEC to award a “fraudulent” victory to his rival President Peter Mutharika in the re-run and “neither will the people”.

Chakwera said Malawi is already struggling with two battles – Coronavirus and to have credible elections.

“There is need to vote and have clean results but MEC is not doing enough to protect the votes, there is a scheme at MEC that threatens the security of your vote.

“We now have evidence that the voters roll is compromised by buying of IDs and registration of minors,” said Chakwera.

MCP party’s secretary general Eisenhower Mkaka also said the voters roll cleaning exercise will require services of experts.

He said the party has already instructed the legal team to follow up the scam so that there is an audit to the whole data base.

He commended Director of ICT Daudi Suleiman for leading in uncovering of the syndicate.

Suleman said there are also multiple registrations in the NRB system using the same ID number.

He said over 1 million under-aged children were also registered in the NRB system and there are over 12,000 registrants whose bio data is mismatching.

Suleman said the youngest person registered in both MEC and NRB system was born in 2019.

NRB denied claims of vote manipulation.