UDF refutes canvassing to influence new MEC chairperson on management of rerun
The United Democratic Front (UDF) has refuted reports that it is canvassing to influence the conduct of the newly elected Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chairperson, Justice Dr Chifundo Kachale, in the management of the of fresh presidential election by taking advantage of his district of origin.
A statement from unknown authors has been circulating on various social media fora, alleging that officials from UDF and its electoral partner, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), met on Thursday to discuss how they can reach out to Kachale in a possible working relationship in the management of the forthcoming fresh presidential election.
The statement, which the UDF has since dismissed as fake, alleges that the UDF Secretary General Kandionamaso Padambo, DPP’s Everton Chimulirenji and Mwayi Kamuyambeni – all who come from Ntcheu – are among officials tasked to engage the new MEC chairperson who comes from the same district with them.
The statement further says on Thursday morning, the team held a meeting at Namiwawa in Blantyre, with Padambo being among the attendees.
However, Padambo, issued a statement Thursday evening, refuting the allegations.
He emphasizes that he did not attend any meeting outside the party secretariat during the entire day on which the meeting is alleged to have been held.
“UDF would therefore like to refute most strongly that the circulating statement is false and aimed at damaging the personal standing and reputation of the party, which cannot permit its Secretary General to be involved in any meeting or activity aimed at undermining the institutions of our hard-earned democratic dispensation,” says Padambo in the statement.
He says UDF is proud of its trajectory in Malawi’s history beginning as an underground movement, which took its place in the vanguard of the forces that gallantly fought and defeated the one-party dictatorship to the time it became a duly registered political party that won the first multiparty elections in 1994.
“In view of that background that UDF highly values the independence, unfettered by an undue interference, of institutions such as the Malawi Electoral Commission to ensure that they uncompromisingly discharge the duties and responsibilities for which they were established to the expectation of Malawians,” stresses Padambo.
Padambo ends his epistle by condemning the wanton abuse of social media in propagating falsities aimed at damaging the standing and reputation of institutions and innocent individuals.
Meanwhile, MEC has gazzetted June 23, 2020, as the date Malawians will go to the poll to elect their new president following the annulment of the May 2019 presidential election by the Constitutional Court on March 3, 2020, and upheld by the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal on May 8, 2020.
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