Day 5 Malawi Elections Case: No UTM monitor has challenged the anomalies

The day five of the Constitutional Court hearing of the 2019 Presidential Elections case ended with UTM Presidential candidate Saulos Chilima telling the court, that no single monitor from his party challenged the results that were sent to the national tally centre in all the 5002 polling stations.

Former Vice President ended his five-day marathon of being cross examined by the Attorney General Kalekeni Kaphale, agreeing with him that the results he disputed before the courts could not have made a difference in the outcome of the elections.

Dr. Chilima, who accepted that he did not meet some of his monitors or critique most of the documents presented, tussled with Kaphale the whole afternoon, but the AG still managed to get him accept that none of his party monitors challenged the alleged the results anywhere.

In this case, the UTM, which one of the lawyers claim had 40 sworn affidavits which were presented by Chilima and questioned a “smoking gun” which could counter the AG’s questions  centred on the results from polling centres and valid votes count or cast.

UTM has been questioning the type of forms, alleged intimidation, alleged bribing of voters and that the results did not reflect the true will of voters.

However, in the absence of a single centre being pinpointed as having altered the valid votes, it is a tall order for the UTM case to proceed on the basis of their submissions.

The court will not sit on Thursday to give way to the Supreme Court to hear an appeal by the Attorney General on whether the matter should proceed or not, based on rules of procedure which he challenged had not been met.