Court reserves ruling on whether to accept MEC’s late submission of Malawi electoral audit report
The Constitutional Court has now received an application by Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to submit to the court a report by external auditors it has hired to validate the results of the elections.
This was disclosed by , Justice Healey Potani on behalf of the panel of five judges hearing the on going election case,
Potani said the court has reserved its ruling, for a later date, on whether to accept the report.
MEC was on July 25 found in breach of court order after it failed to submit the audit to court as requested by first petitioner UTM party leader Saulos Chilima and second petitioner Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president Lazarus Chakwera’s lawyers.
Later, the commission told the media that the failure to submit the report was because the commission was still waiting for the auditing firm, BDO Jordan, a firm commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to respond to some questions the commission had on the contents of the report.
The auditor’s report on the processing and transmission of results for the May 21 2019 polls shows that the electoral body had more results-related challenges than they admitted, which needed to be addressed before announcing winners.
For example, the report says there were 273 forms affected by the controversial correction material, Tippex, 65 forms were manually amended, 45 had missing signatures, while 66 forms did not have political parties’ signatures.
According to the report, some Form 66 sheets were unclear; other forms used were not original and even more were excessively Tippexed by presiding officers (POs).
There was suspected manipulation of results forms, and the MEC information, communication and technology (ICT) people, in some instances, scanned the wrong copies of Form 66 and captured wrong data, according to the report.
After meeting for 11 days, the court has now gone on recess and will resume sitting on September 3.
Chilima and his key witness are the only individuals who have testified in a case this far.
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Con court should get it and make judgement from it rather than entertaining citizens with your foolish debate.We are not interested in your English nor cognitive thinking. We are not interested lawyers but evidence that is visible.
Kaphale reasoning ability is a little bit fallacious here. What about if APM had 2,000,001 and Chakwera had 2,000,0002 votes,. And now by deliberate action we take from Chakwera 2 votes and put at APM 2,000,003 votes and now chakwera at 2,000,000. And APM now declared a winner. Will two votes be material? He needs to seee his line of thinking.
Achimwene, this is why we are saying that the Court is being moved by Kaphale!!!!!!!!!
As a constitutional court the matter at hand is not about whether the irregularities materially affected the outcome of the elections but rather whether the elections were conducted in accordance to the requirement of the constitution and the accompanying presidential and parliamentary act. MEC has no powers apart from the powers given to it by the constitution and the accompanying acts and any divergent to those powers is illegal and invalid. Why so many use of duplicates sheets, tippex, unsigned result sheets etc etc in this election? All this talk by Kaphale about “whether the irregularities materially affected the outcome… Read more »
Additionally, a Commission of Inquiry must be instituted to find and document exactly what and why this happened…….the recommendation of the inquiry MUST be implemented accordingly and transparently……..jail anybody involved in vote manipulation to re set standards and bring fear to anybody who may think about doing this again in future ie see what happened with Vuwa and Mhone votes in NB constituency……the offender actually confessed in court of vote results manipulation…but set free to go home, REALLY? I am just imagining if it was in the US……………KWALI!!! The Commission of Inquiry must comprise of UK, US or Germany or… Read more »
Waiting more comments from cadets please
muyisova,boma likuyenda without opposition,2024 wooooo!
the answer is clear the ruling will not be in favour of MEC even akid knows it well
ONLY IN AFRICA ( MALAWI )WHERE
2+2= 100 ——-10×10= 0 (Mixed up & confused brains ) fake professors –fake doctors —fake graduates -fake–fake results -(–TIPPEX )
Smelling a rat with crooked MEC based referrer. They did not comply all that time. Court should ask UNDP for audit report direct.
Rigged elections
The last sentence should have read: Chilima and his key witness are the only individuals who have testified in the case so far. This suggests that giving testimony is on-going while the way you ended your sentence gives the impression that the cross-examination has ended with only those two witnesses.
MEC yatitayisira nthawi.