Malawi’s main opposition on Tuesday filed a suit for a re-run of last week’s presidential polls won by the ruling party as the European Union questioned the results of the impoverished country’s third free polls.
Meanwhile, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) which came second in the presidential polls but gained a parliamentary majority in general elections held the same day, said it would not join the government of the new President Bingu wa Mutharika.
”We are challenging the validity of the results. We have filed documents with the court this morning and we want a re-run,” said Charles Mhango, lawyer for Gwanda Chakuamba of the seven-party Mgwirizano (Unity) Coalition,.
”The irregularities are quite massive, not even a re-count will do,” he said.
Chakuamba, came third in last week’s controversial polls, won by Mutharika from the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) — the handpicked successor of outgoing leader Bakili Muluzi.
Nickolas Dausi, the second vice president of the once-dominant MCP said it would not join Mutharika’s government but would also not ”rush to court until substantive evidence of rigging and irregularities were found”.
”It’s a big no. The party will work in opposition because no sensible person would want to work with a party that robbed us of a clear victory,” he said.
The MCP founded by former Malawian dictator Kamuzu Banda, led the poor southern African nation to independence in 1964 from Britain. It won 60 seats — the largest — in the 193-member parliament in last week’s elections.
But its leader, John Tembo, trailed by some 273 281 votes to Mutharika and was declared runner-up by the electoral commission.
Malawi’s outgoing president Muluzi reluctantly stepped down after two terms and failing in his bid to change the constitution to allow him a third.
He came to power in 1994 in Malawi’s first multi-party elections, ending three decades of iron-fisted rule by the country’s founder-president Hastings Banda.
Mutharika’s victory has sparked opposition protests since the weekend, in which at least three people died.
His inauguration on Monday was also marred by protests in Malawi’s economic capital Blantyre.
The elections had attracted controversy even before they started with the number of voters being whittled down by nearly a million to 5,7-million and an opposition complaint on the issue leading the election date to be deferred by two days.
Unity coalition leader Chakuamba claimed victory before the results were announced, saying that his supporters, independent groups and church officials who monitored the voting considered him ”the clear winner”.
Meanwhile, European Union observers Tuesday questioned the results of the elections.
Evoking a ”lack of transparency in the tabulation of results,” an EU statement released here said: ”We now urge the Malawi electoral commission to rapidly publish detailed results down to the polling station level”.
But Commonwealth observers issued a fresh statement on Tuesday saying ”voters were free to express their wishes on election day… but because of the problems with the register, the bias of the state media and the abuse of incumbency, the process prior to election day was unfair.
”Some of the requirements of the democratic process have been met, but others have not,” it added.
Wedged between Mozambique and Zambia, Malawi ranks 163 out of 173 developing countries according to a UN scale, and is also one of the hardest-hit by the HIV/Aids crisis, which has brought life expectancy down to 36. – Sapa-AFP