Malawi witness re-examined, explains Malawi polls irregularities

Fourth witness for Malawi Congress Party (MCP) presidential hopeful Lazarus Chakwera in the elections petition case, Anthony Bendulo, on Friday highlighted alleged electoral irregularities during re-examination, saying Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) data entry personnel were involved in rigging May 21 elections.

Bendulo, guided by one of the second  petitioner’s lawyer Mordecai Msisha, told the court that the entry process at the National Tally Centre by MEC involved four people entering the same results separately.

He cited a center where 816 registered voters casted their votes.

“The center was supposed to have two streams. Looking at page 149, Form 66c that MEC attached in their system. Looking at the candidate scores or votes, it shows that Dr Lazarus Chakwera got 173 votes in stream one, 178 votes on stream two and total summation is 351. Saulos Klaus Chilima got 52 and 32 respectively.

“Looking at the top of the tally sheet on my left, it shows that stream one received 450 ballot papers. Stream two as well received 450 ballot papers too. Stream 1 had 174 ballot papers were unused. Stream 2 had 201 unused. There were no cancelled ballot papers. Null and void ballot papers was 1 ballot paper on each stream,” said Bendulo.

At the end, the witness  said that according to data entered, it showed that Chakwera had 83 votes instead of 351, Chilima had his votes reduced from from 83 to 1 while President Peter Mutharika has his correct total of 86.

“For me to say that this is not a mere error but rigging, it is because the officers did not stop from entering wrong data but also were correcting figures to match with what they have wrongly entered,” Bendulo  said .

He said  the total votes were reduced by 175 with Chakwera votes being turned into null and void votes to make it 524 null and void votes.

President Peter Mutharika of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in his personal capacity as the declared winner, is the first respondent with MEC as the second respondent.

The petitioners – Chakwera and Chilima – contend that Mutharika “won a fraudulent May 21 2019 Presidential Election” fraught with irregularities, including alleged tampering with election results sheets through correction fluid, popularly known as Tippex.