It’s hightime every Malawian realised that an election is a political process rather than a one-day exercise. Yes, we vote in a single day and by law the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) is supposed to announce winners within seven days but preparations for this seemingly short event takes years.
If we use a pregnancy analogy then MEC is expected to midwife an election, making sure it does not end in a stillbirth. Elections need a neutral electoral management body that instils public confidence in electoral processes and ensures transparency, integrity and fairness to all parties involved. We start losing the plot the moment we start ‘firing’ commissioners just because an election didn’t go our way.
Recently, the Public Appointments Committee (PAC) resolved to have the current MEC Commissioners (whose contracts end in June 2020 anyway) removed. This might look normal to the uninitiated but it’s clear to some of us: This is a scheme that was calculated sometime back. As a plan B in the event that APM won the presidency in the May 2019 elections.
The opposition now wants a MEC they can dictate terms to, hence wanting to ‘fire’ these. Just look at the composition of PAC – you will get my point. The constitutional court didn’t find any rigging so why recommend for removal of commissioners when legally there is nothing wrong they have done? Your guess is as good as mine.
The argument that MEC commissioners were competent in the way they run the local government and parliamentary elections but were incompetent in the way they run the presidential elections is a very stupid argument. Even the backing argument that the constitutional judges did not rule on the local government and parliamentary elections. That really is stupid too. The earth is round. Full stop. This doesn’t depend on any judge to say whether it is or not.
Even gravitation force, it doesn’t depend on the constitutional judges to determine what, as a people should look at as its effect. If you jump, the force will pull you down. … they are called laws of nature. APM has acted fairly to be honest by pointing out these flaws of logic to parliament and through the appeal to the Supreme Court. The fact that PAC was there thanks to the same commissioners who are being accused of being incompetent speaks volume.
If you really believe MEC is incompetent why not maintain the same energy and resign? I actually wasn’t surprised to learn that Members of Parliament were going to vote on a motion by Nkhata Bay West MP Chrispine Mphande, seeking to ammend the Electoral Commission Act, to among others give powers to PAC on the appointment of MEC top officials. Can you see the script? You can’t make this stuff up! Taking away MEC’s independence is tantamount to rewinding our democracy 27 years into one MCP dictatorial rule.
The very same system Malawians rejected in a referendum. MCP is hell bent on winning the presidency so much that it’s willing to plunge the country into chaos. And judging by events of the past several months I have no doubt they can go as far as inciting a (civil) war if they don’t have it their way. We need to take this seriously because, according to the African Union (AU), elections and political transitions have been among the top threats to peace and security in Africa in the last two decades.
Power hungry politicians have the potential to trigger political violence, conflict or sometimes full-blown wars. It’s going to be unwise to bow down to the demands of a few vocal people and give them what they want – a yes bwana, yes dona, MEC. If it were up to me I’d say let’s leave things as they are, we just need to fix one or two things – like what MEC is already doing. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!
