The Malawi 2014 Presidential Election is apparently over. At literally the 9th hour late last night the Malawi Electoral Commission was told that yes, they had the power to manually recount the votes (to which there have been high speculations of miscount, ballot tampering, rigging, etc) but the constitution stated that the results had to be announced 8 days after the recount. So basically MEC had about 90 minutes to announce the winner even though they aren't quite sure who that winner is. They had no choice but to announce the winner that they had at the time. Rather than confuse you more, for those of you interested here are two write-ups. The first is a Malawian point of view from a pastor friend of ours. The second is from an American missionary. Malawi needs your prayers!
Pastor Sean Kampondeni (Malawian): Justice Comes With Tears
The long wait is over. The Malawi Electoral Commission has determined and declared that in these our elections Arthur Peter Mutharika of the Democratic Progressive Party was duly elected the fifth president of the Republic of Malawi. From the 5, 288, 258 votes that were cast, Mutharika received 36.4%, just under 9% more than Dr. Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party. The incumbent and now outgoing president, Dr. Joyce Banda, came third with just over a million votes, while Atupele Muluzi came a distant third with 13% of the vote.
The day began with all eyes on the High Court. Justice Kenyatta Nyirenda was expected to deliver a ruling regarding whether the Malawi Electoral Commission had the legal power to follow through on its intention to verify the results by conducting a manual recount of the votes. At the same time, he was expected to deliver a ruling on whether the court had the legal power to give the Malawi Electoral Commission extra days to conduct the recount beyond the 8 day deadline required by law. The ruling was not delivered until after 10 pm, perhaps timed for an hour in which most Malawians would be in their homes and many of them off the streets, especially considering that earlier in the day protesters had clashed with police in Mangochi in connection with the elections, resulting in one fatality. In the end, Justice Kenyatta Nyirenda ruled that the MEC does indeed have the power by law to conduct a manual recount of votes, but that the court does not have the power by law to extend the period in which the MEC could verify the results. As such, any recount by MEC would have needed to be completed within the 8 days the law requires for determination of results. In the words of the noble judge, "My role is to interpret the law, not to change it". In Kenyatta's conclusion, those who claimed that MEC has the power to take more days for result verification were as much in error as those who claimed that the MEC has no power to conduct a vote recount. It was a balanced and measured judgment rooted in the dictates of the law, as limited as that law may be. The net effect of this was that MEC had 1 hour and 15 minutes to announce the election results, since though they had the power to do a recount, they would not have the time to do it.
As the nation's attention turned back to the Malawi Electoral Commission, Justice Maxon Mbendera was introduced to make a statement before the results would be declared. He began by deploring the death of the young person in the clash between protesters and police in Mangochi. In a fitting moment of umunthu, Justice Mbendera broke down as he called the nation to observe a minute of silence in respect to the protester who had died. It took him some time to compose himself again, to recover that voice of steadiness we have come to look to for signs of stability in this electoral storm. It was obvious that the death of the Mangochi protester had affected him in a personal way, and in that instant it was obvious that Mbendera belongs to that rare breed of men for whom the loss of a human life is of greater significance than the losing or winning of an election. It should be our prayer that the newly elected president, Professor Peter Mutharika, and his vice-president, Saulos Chilima, will similarly prove themselves to be men worthy of the highest offices in our land. The road ahead will not be easy politically, not only because the legislature has been divided in this election, and not only because this was the most bitterly contested election yet, but also because the new president must find a unifying voice with which to gain the trust of 63.6% of Malawian voters who rejected his leadership by voting for someone else. Perhaps it is good that the election ended with Maxon Mbendera's tears reminding us that one way we should measure the quality of those who sit in high places is by their capacity for compassion towards those who lie in low places, no matter which party they belong to. Long Live Malawi. Shalom.
Larry Brown (American): I was wrong in what I previously reported. I got up this morning and got online, and discovered a winner has been declared in the Malawi presidential election. He’s the brother of a former president whose second term was cut short when he dropped dead from a heart attack. The former president won worldwide praise during his first term. On furlough in the US I listened to National Public Radio (NPR) one day and it spoke of the “Malawi Miracle.” But then, in 2009, the late brother changed after winning re-election. He expelled the British ambassador, and told other foreign donors (accounts for 40% of the government’s budget) to “go to hell.” Malawi then didn’t have the hard currency to pay for imports, and we were having to leave our cars at the filling stations for a couple of days in order to get gas. The late president bought himself a jet plane. He inspired anti-government demonstrations in the summer of 2011, and police fired on people, using live ammo, and killed 20 people.
The new president tried to conceal his brother’s death, plotted to take the reins of power for himself, but then the lady who was vice president was sworn in instead. The new president was charged with treason, but I’m sure he will now grant himself a presidential pardon.
In the past year the country has been rocked by a scandal that the newspapers named “Cashgate.” Politicians and government officials looted the national treasury, and as a result schools and hospitals became largely nonfunctional. The lady who has been president for the past two years has caught the blame, but it’s a safe bet that the shenanigans preceded her elevation to the presidency.
The Malawi Election Commission still maintains that the results of this last election were mighty fishy (ballot boxes turning up in strange places, at some places more ballots in the boxes than registered voters), but were forced by the High Court to declare a winner anyway.
Please pray for the little country of Malawi. I think it is in for a difficult time.
