MEC under fire for failure to notify parties over materials plane cargo time change 

Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has come under intense fire after it failed to inform political parties that the plane carrying some voting materials from China would come earlier than scheduled.

Political party representatives and other electoral stakeholders failed to witness the arrival of indelink ink and thumb print pads on Wednesday because the plane carrying the materials arrived earlier than the scheduled 5:30 pm at Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe.

This comes at a time when suspicions are still high over the conduct of MEC after the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld a Constitutional Court ruling which found that the May 21, 2019 elections were marred with widespread irregularities and anomalies.

Malawi Congress Party (MCP) representative Howard Kachipanda, who arrived at the airport to witness the arrival of the cargo said he was surprised that MEC did not bother to inform the electoral stakeholders over the change of arrival time of the cargo plane.

“This is very surprising that they had to change the arrival time last minute then they did not want to inform us of the change,” he told reporters at the airport.

The cargo plane brought 36,000 indelink ink bottles and 31,500 pieces of thumb print pads.

“We found the materials already offloaded before the initial time. We are wondering why MEC did not inform us,” he said.

But MEC spokesperson Sangwani Mwafulirwa said there was no time to inform the stakeholders of the changes.