Malawi Parliament starts work on ConCourt order over 50+1 electoral rule

Parliament says it is to start wiring immediately on a Constitutional Court order to put in place relevant laws for electoral reforms on 50+1 rule.

Judge Healey Potani on Monday gave the 193-strong House 21 days to meet and pass the 50+1 rule.

The court pointed out that country’s current electoral system for presidential elections, the plurality-based First Past the Post (FPTP) system needs reforms  and recommend reforming the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections Act (PPEA) that in it’s current state it doesn’t provide means of handling cases where none of the candidates has a majority vote.

Officials from Parliament says they will start working on the legislation, saying the 21 day ultimatum expires when parliament will be in session for the midterm budget.

Since the introduction of multiparty politics in Malawi, the FPTP electoral system has been used for the selection of the country’s president.

Under these rules, the candidate on the ballot who gets the most votes is duly elected.

On two another occasions, in 2004 and 2014, the president-elect gathered only about 36 percent of the votes. That is, in the latter elections, altogether 64 percent of the voters selected other candidates and their votes were thus “wasted” (i.e. valid votes that ultimately do count towards the election of a candidate).

Furthermore, the candidates coming in second have received more than 25 percent of voting support in all five elections organised since 1994 and in three of the elections; even the candidate coming in third has gathered support, above 18 percent.