MEC meets presidential candidates Mutharika, Joyce Banda: Next are Chakwera and Chilima
The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) on Tuesday embarked on a process of meeting and engaging political party leaders ahead of next year’s elections and the process started with meeting President Peter Mutharika at State House in Lilongwe and former President and leader of the People’s Party, Joyce Banda at her Area 43 residence.
Chief Elections Officer Sam Alfandika confirmed the development at Linde Motel at Mponela in Dowa on Wednesday during the national faith leaders conference on governance consolidation and women in politics organised by Act Alliance.
According to Alfandika, the commission is expected to also meet leader of opposition and Malawi Congress Party (MCP) presudent Lazarus Chakwera before meeting Vice-President Saulosi Chilima, who is also leader of the new political block in the county, UTM.
He also said the commision will also meet leaders of all political parties in the country in a quest to lobby for abrogation of hate speech as a way of trying to achieve equitable, fair, transparent and accessible elections.
“We are engaging all political party leaders, we want them to promote unity in the country by encouraging political tolerance,” Alfandika said.
Political violence looks eminent ahead of the fourthcoming elections if recent cases are anything to go by and Alfandika said it is sad that most violent acts are perpetrated by political leaders.
“We are asking you religious leaders to avoid being partisan and try as much as possible to be neutral,” he said.
In his key note speech, general secretary for Malawi Council of Churches Bishop Gilford Matonga stressed the need for the free and fair elections.
Matonga said women can manage to win different positions during the forthcoming general elections and they should be given opportunities on political positions.
He urged women to have self confidence and be able to speak.
In her remarks, Reverend Agnes Nyirenda of Livingstonia Synod’s Area 23 Church, commended the organizing coommittee of this year’s women in politics conference saying it will help to drum up support for women candidates.
She said although the meeting is long overdue, it still is important. She said women are also being sidelined even in churches.
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Why meeting them separately????……..hmmmmmmmm MEC should have met with them at the same time
And i feel if it was necessary to meet these political leaders , why not meet them in public unlike in private as it is the case? They could have organised a public meeting for all these leaders.
I disagree with this idea of meeting all political leaders because all these MEC officials belong to DPP, therefore let them conduct this meeting with peter mutharika, full stop
Bishop Matonga has a point about women aspiring for politics, and this is an urgent and opportune time to raise the issue of broader representation.
Now, let’ get a little bit radical thought, shall we?
Abale inu, we should start seriously thinking towards gender equity for a fairer world of our politics of representation. For 2024.
My personal view: under the current environment where both genders have to fight on an equal footing, like in the advanced political democracies we envy so much, it could take us ten if not more generations to get to the much needed equity or even close to it. We should seriously be considering it yesterday.
The main reason the slope is so steep is, basically, because of the patriarchy so embedded in our culture. That is the real stumbling block baasi.
Now, if we can’t change the prevalent “heavy duty” patriarchy, a possible solution may be set a gender limit: like no single gender should occupy more than 60% of the seats in Parliament.
Here is one plan:-
Currently, we have 198 constituencies – but with population growth, soon we will exceed 200 seats; so I will work with this number.
Say we set the MALE limit, as a guide, and not in fixed terms, say at 60% plus/minus 5% – Not 50% because baby steps will be less threatening to (older) men.
So, out of 200 MPs, we would have…….114 – 126 MALE Mps (60% plus/minus 5%)
And, out the 200 MPs we would have.. 74 – 86 FEMALE MPs ( ie. the 40% – by default (without a margin of error) because they are already a minority)
Every PARTY in each constituency would be mandated to run 2 candidates – one female and one male. So, you could have as many as 5 women running in a constituency depending on the number of parties. This would not necessarily balance the equation, but would improve the chances of having a woman win in a constituency.
Say, we had an election resulting in 150 men elected and 50 women elected, we would re-run the elections in the constituencies where a woman didn’t win.
And we would accept results of the second vote, come what may. At least this would be a step in the right direction.
If the disparity persists, then we would start thinking about nominated MPs in certain constituencies, using an agreed upon formula.
Or maybe we could combine certain districts and have FEMALE MPs nominated for and from these combined districts.
This restructuring is too important to be left to political scientists: MEC should invite proposals from all Malawians.
A committee of MPs and credible academics (No clergy or anybody else) would be charged with the final version of the proposal to change the constitution. To be sure, this is not esoteric as to take it out of the hands of ordinary citizens, and confine it to the elites! Proposals would have to be invited by MEC from every citizen who wants to propose a credible method of enhancing gender representation.
And, who knows? Then we may have gender parity in cabinet!
These changes would, obviously, require constitutional modifications, and I think there is enough goodwill in our parliament for them.
A very long term project, no less.
Acts of crooks…………….!! How can we be sure of what you shared with the political party presidents when the meetings were done in-camera!
Worse still what do we take of DPP officials namely: Alufandika, Ansah, Mathanga, Nkosi, Moffat Banda, Mtafu etc disguised as MEC officials meeting DPP president [their own party president] discussing how best to go about 2019 elections? What were they discussing about 2019 elections as DPP officials? Can that be for general good or they were there to thank their master for giving them a good job [MEC Commissioner].
Malawians do we believe MEC/DPP officials can have the courage to tell APM, [the same person who nominated these ladies and gentlemen] the mistakes he is making in as far as preparing for elections issue is concerned?
An independent body would have been better Alufandika, not a compromised team like yours!!
These are serious tricks and only small and superficial brains can appreciate this!! Ana a njoka awa a Malawi tiyeni tisamalane nawooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Agree with kamdidi..UTM doesn’t have a presidential candidate yet.
This is nice. Prevention is better than cure. We don’t want any blood shed during pre/post election 2019. After all, we are all Malawians and this is only our home. We need to love and be patriotic to this country. Make Malawi a safe place to live
The heading is talking about MECmeeting presidential candidates and the content is talking about MEC meeting political party leaders. Chilima is an interim UTM party leader and not presidential candidate as UTM is yet to hold its first ever convention where all NEC positions including that of the leader and presidential candidate will be elected. MEC should know that better, otherwise meeting Chilima as a presidential candidate might open a cane of questions as it would mean the electoral body has endorsed him before the convention…and that would be a disaster on the conduct of MEC!
Just my layman’s views on this!
It’s obvious that he’s going to be presidential candidate for PP..why cooking a story without anything to say
Ha ha ha no mention of UDF. This party is now considered a small party. Pathetic and to hell with a Chair and his son Atupele. They have downgraded the party for the family interest.
I personally do not trust this composition of MEC Commissioners, let alone this MEC CEO. Alfandika.
I thought every party has got his own representative as a commissioner..what are you talking about?
Waste of time
I would like to ask MEC to meet MBC Director-General to stop MBC being used as a propaganda tool for DPP. MBC is a public broadcaster, therefore, it has to be neutral. It has to be objective
MEC should wait for parties to present nomination papers. Those are the presidential candidates. What about Professor John Chisi, Chihana and company?
By the way MEC should meet all the presidents in one gathering. In separate meetings everyone will say, “But it’s them that call us names”. It should just because dressing down.