Citizens Forum endorses Malawi election recount
The Malawi Citizens Forum on Thursday joined stakeholders to call upon the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to ensure that a vote recount is carried out before any official results of the elections are announced.
The forum’s Chairperson Dawn Gowa-Nyasulu told journalists in Lilongwe that the recounting of votes will make Malawi to have credible elections results while at the same time safeguarding peace, unity and national consensus.
“The recount will help address all the irregularities, fears and concerns that all political players who participated in the May 20, elections have raised,” he said.
He said the elections will only be seem to be free, fair and credible if the anomalies are addressed as the gravity put to question the purportedly elected officials.
However, the forum’s Secretary Chancy Mtambo wondered the actions of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) actions for denying the recount of votes against all the stakeholders who agrees that recount is the only option for credible results.
“This leaves a lot of questions than answers on their role in the irregularities and anomalies that rocked the May 20, tripartite elections,” he said.
Therefore, he said, it was imperative for political parties to be responsible in their quest for power and avoid at all cost to put the nation at ransom through actions that can ignite civil unrest.
The process of rebuilding Malawi rests on the stakeholders of the electoral process agreeing to the recount of the ballots as a way of addressing the irregularities in the election, he said.
As citizens and stakeholders in the elections, Mtambo said, they will accept any leadership that emerges from free, fair and credible electoral process which is devoid of irregularities.
