Tippex use affects Malawi presidential poll results: MEC refuses to name culprits
Tippex—a brand of correction fluid—is apparently said to have been overwhelmingly used in the erasing and then rewriting of results in Tuesday’s election, a development that has forced pollster Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to abate updating of the presidential results until “complaints are sorted out.”
Tension has gripped the country in the last as the citizenry anticipated an official update on the presidential race on Friday.
The last update, on Wednesday, put Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Peter Mutharika ahead with Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and UTM Party Lazarus Chakwera and Saulos Chilima trailing second and a distant third respectively.
Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chairperson, Jane Ansah, sounding calm and confident said they would not rush to announced the presidential results until all complaints were resolved.
She revealed that the Commission received 147 complaints on Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Elections.
“Our legal team is expediently reviewing all the complaints received and giving feedback to the complainants,” said Ansah.
Responding to questions from the media on alleged use of tippex, Ansah said “its use was synonymous” across the districts.
“The issue has not left any district where tippex has not been used. And, therefore I cannot say which party was using it. I can’t say that. Then we would not be making any progress,” she said, briefly.
According to Ansah, she was perturbed by the use of tippex on the result sheets which MEC never provided to its staff during the elections.
She insisted that the commission would withhold the presidential results arguing it was crucial that all issues are sorted out.
I do not see evidence of tipp-ex use on the sheet depicted? It looks like the figures were just over written. One can see the original figures below the corrected ones. It looks like there is a much more serious problem on this sheet. Each polling station was issued with 800 ballot papers, but the total votes for each station is much more then 800? In total 4,000 ballots were issued, but the total votes is 7,926??? Problem!
Three people in Nsanje were found red handed using Tipp- Ex, changing figures and also marking fresh ballot papers several days after the official polling day and were arrested.The ballots in question they were marking were in favour of the DPP. Is this not evidence enough to pin point that the DPP is behind this? These officers could not do such a thing without the authority of the said party. If not, for what interest were these officers doing it for.
No justice in Malawi
They were not provided any Tipp – ex then where did they get it from and by whose authority did they do this?
The tippexed sheet Nyasa Times you have shown us just reveals how incompetent these MEC people were, it is so much a ‘dog’s break fast’ work. How can result figures for elections be as dirty as shown on the displayed sheet? Surely they could have used better qualified people who understand quality and efficiency in crucial figure work.