Only one woman submits nomination for Mzuzu City parlimentary seat out of 10
Despite a smooth nomination week in Mzuzu City, only one woman has submitted her nomination forms to contest as Member of Parliament for Mzuzu City Constituency. This was disclosed by Constituency Returning Officer for Mzuzu City Rebecca Chirwa on Friday.
“94 Councilors have submitted their nomination, these are 79 male and 15 females. For MP we had 10 candidates; 10 men and one lady from AFORD, another lady did not return the forms.
“The whole exercise has gone on well although there were some hiccups in filling the forms as people were making mistakes on the number on the national ID and the MEC voter certificate number,” Chirwa said .
And the aspiring female MP Mercy Mbezuma Mfune of Alliance for Democracy presented her nomination papers on Friday with a promise to ensure that schools are secured for children to remain in school. Mbezuma who is contesting for the second time said that she has had enough time to reposition herself and is hopeful to clinch the Parliamentary seat.
“I will contest as the Member of Parliament for Mzuzu City, I will be the first female MP in Mzuzu City. I will be the first female MP here in Mzuzu. I am very touched, schools are not protected as there are just a few schools which are protected to ensure that children stay in school and learn,” Mfune said.
Some leaders of political parties and their councilors have admitted that more needs to be done to support women to attain the Country’s goals on women in political leadership.
Of the 15 aspiring female councilors who have submitted their nomination forms in Mzuzu City , two are from the People’s Party (PP) , three have come from the ruling DPP, People’s Party has two female councilors , the United Democratic Front (UDF) has one woman while Malawi Congress Party (MCP) has two female councilors and some from the United Transformation Movement (UTM) among others.
Speaking for the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) which unveiled two female councilors Malawi Congress Party’s North-South Regional Chairman Gracious Mafeni Soko said that MCP would work to address the low number of women participating as candidates in elections, in future
“ As a Party we are not doing enough, we understand it is a process it cannot be done in a day but we know wherever we have gone wrong we are going to correct them.
Mzuzu City’s only elected female Councilor, Judith Chiume, who was compelled to lay aside her ambitions to contest as MP for Mzuzu City when her party, the PP roped in Justice Chimaliro said that although she would contest again as Councilor, the Country still has a long way to go to attain more women in political leadership positions.
Meanwhile, MEC record indicate that only three political parties have councilors who have submitted nomination forms to contest in the Local Government Elections in all 15 wards. The parties include; DPP, MCP and UTM.
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