My cheap advice from someone who has been at the core of MEC activities.
The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) is collectively run by six commissioners and one Chair, not a management structure.
No single commissioner, the Chairperson Annabel Mtalimanja or the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Andrew Mpesi, alone can make and implement decisions at MEC, as that would be illegal. This should be the basis of electoral stakeholders’ further engagement among themselves or with the MEC.
All decisions at MEC are collectively made by commissioners (7 people). I repeat that the chairperson alone or in agreement with the CEO cannot make any decision on her own without being challenged by other commissioners. Remember, there are 3 commissioners each from MCP and DPP.
If there are people who should be protesting against MEC in any form are electoral stakeholders that are not represented in MEC. It would be ironic to see MCP and DPP protesting against MEC, as this would be a vote of no confidence in their commissioners.
This is not the case as both parties have renewed contracts of commissioners, meaning that they are doing a good job, including the selection of the Smartmatic company. You can’t renew someone’s contract while at the same time rejecting their work.
If there are issues against MEC, go to court. Protests are extremely disruptive to the economy (remember 2019/2020).
Let all people calling for the resignation of the Chairperson and CEO note that there are sections in our electoral laws that spell out how these can be removed; obviously, it is not through demonstrations but by legal means.
You will demonstrate until you demonstrate no more, but these two can’t be removed by those means. It didn’t happen with Jane Ansar, and it will not happen now. If you don’t like what MEC is doing, then go to court to get the entire commission removed, not just select two people who, on their own, can’t make decisions.
The selection of the Smartmatic company was highly consultative, and all commissioners and key electoral stakeholders were involved. Discuss issues about results transmission and determination, that is, where risks are not in the machine or system.
All results will be known at the polling centres, and all stakeholders will have signed copies of RESULTS SHEETS. It doesn’t matter how the results will be transmitted after the counting.
Stakeholders will compare the results they have from every polling centre with what is being announced by MEC at the National Tally Centre. What is the fuss about electronic transmission when, at the same time, there is a manual transmission and results will already be flying in all forms of media?
If we love this country, we need to give people the right information about the electoral processes, vote counting, results transmission system, results determination and how you stakeholders have been/will monitor these processes.
This will give confidence to voters. Creating mistrust in our electoral system is extremely irresponsible. We worked so had with many stakeholders to bring sanity and trust at MEC. Please don’t allow this to be disturbed. The current electoral system was set up in a way that rigging these elections by the commissioners, staff or any stakeholder will be impossible without being detected.
My cheap advice is that get your experts to conduct detailed risk assessments for each electoral process especially voting, counting, transmission, determination and announcement of results.
This is where you should spend all your energies not demonstrations or calls for the resignation of MEC Chairperson and CEO which will yield no results. Strengthen your monitoring systems at all levels of the electoral processes.
