MCP pins down Chilima on vote rigging claims for Malawi watershed polls

Main opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP) said they strongly believe Vice-President Saulos Chilima has an intimate knowledge of rigging machinations for the country’s watershed polls and that he should give more details regarding how Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is planning to rig and how it manipulated the results of 2014 election for President Peter Mutharika and him to be declared winner.

Chilima  said when he launched his United Transformation Movement  (UTM) in Lilongwe that he is aware that government has procured a spying machine meant to record phone-call conversations through the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra), saying all this was out of desperation to rig elections.

The former Chief Executive Officer for one of the country’s biggest mobile telecommunication providers,  Airtel, said recording people’s phone conversations was illegal and criminal.

He said: “Machine anuwo ngati mukuti mubera mavoti mwauponda [If you think you will rig elections using the spy machine you are wasting your time]”.

But MCP in  statement issued by its publicity secretary Reverend Maurice Munthali said Chilima’s statement is a vindication that Chakwera won the 2014 elections but  that Mutharika was declared winner on fraudulent results.

“We in MCP take Chilima’s message as both vindication of what MCP under Chakwera has always been preaching about but alsi as a window for us to inqure  more from SKC (Saulos Klaus Chilima),” Rev Munthali said.

DPP and government spokesman Nicholous Dausi denied the rigging claims and that it is not true that Chilima helped DPP rig 2014 elections, as widely alleged.

But MCP said they are following the pattern of rigging strategy starting from registration and that they will seriously counter any manouverers to steal the votes.