MCP insists DPP ruling Malawi illegitimately
Main opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP) has stressed that their party position is that President Peter Mutharika and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are in government illegitimately.
MCP director of elections, Henry Kamata said on Sunday at a rally in Lilongwe that there is there is contradiction on the party’s position on the legitimacy of the DPP.
“I am the director of elections in MCP, we mounted our own voter tally centre, we computed all the votes our centre indicated that Dr Lazarous Chakwera won the elections but the Malawi Electoral Commission robbed us our victory,” said Kamata.
He was speaking at a “thank you rally” organised by longest serving Member of Parliament for Lilongwe Moshi South Vitus Dzoole Mwale.
Kamata stressed that though official results indicated that MCP came second in the May 20 2014 presidential elections, in reality it won the elections and that President Mutharika was sworn in illegitimately.
MCP regional chairman for the central, Daniel Mlomo, also buttressed Kamata’s accusing the electoral body of doctoring the results in favour of DPP.
“Some people said we keep on complaining, no that’s not true, we will keep reminding Malawians that we were the legitimate winners,” said Mlomo.
University of Malawi political analyst Boniface Dulani told Nation on Sunday saying MCP “is caught between trying to project itself as a credible government-in-waiting while at the same time trying to undermine a government that was brought into office based on disputed elections.”
“MCP lost a big opportunity to fight the legitimacy of the DPP government when it decided to discontinue their elections case, first by refusing to appeal against a High Court decision of May 30 2014 by Justice Kenyatta Nyirenda and, secondly, by refusing to challenge the results that were announced by MEC despite the concession by the electoral body itself on the existence of many flaws in the electoral process”.
“In the event that MCP had managed to secure a court ruling that questioned the veracity of the DPP victory, then they would have made a stronger case about the illegitimacy of the DPP government,” he said.
Dulani observed that by not pursuing the elections case further, MCP put itself in the current quandary.
“As much as many people share the belief that the elections were badly managed, MCP missed an opportunity to work towards revealing any electoral discrepancies and to begin to correct them. That decision, in my view, meant MCP was willing and ready to move on, even if it meant burying the obvious flaws in the elections management. Once that decision was made, they should live with it instead of the current contradictory posturing that is doing them more harm than good,” he said.
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