Malawi army soldiers guard Constitutional Court overnight for poll gadgets

Malawi Defence Force (MDF) are guarding  overnight the High Court which is housing the Constitutional Court hearing the historic presidential election nullification petition case.

The courts were keeping Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) gadgets which  IT expert Daud Suleman, witness for second petitioner and Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president Lazarus Chakwer is using to illustrate how the May 21 elections might have been rigged.

Sulemani was also escorted by MDF soldiers out of the court premises soon after giving his evidence in the court on Friday.

In his evidence, Sulemani through his simulation, said the May 21 polls were declared based on manipulated results.

Suleman demonstrated  in cpurt how MEC’s computerised election result management system (RMS) was allegedly breached by a ‘ghost’ operator to change the results of the presidential elections in favour of incumbent Peter Mutharika.

He said some MEC computers were simultaneously accessed by different users despite being located at places that were geographically apart.

In a presentation, using the software the electoral body used during the May 21 elections, Suleman focused on demonstrating before the panel of five judges hearing the elections case, how MEC’s election result management system safeguards were breached.

He provided evidence to back a theory that the presidential results announced by MEC chairperson Jane Ansah in May were not credible.

Using graphical evidence, Suleman demonstrated to the court first how the computer system left trailing evidence that information which had earlier been applauded in the system was later deleted by the hacker or group of hackers.

On Monday, he is expected to continue the simulation using MEC gadgets to prove his point, according to his lawyers.