President Peter Mutharika’s first witness in the presidential elections case Ben Phiri has told the Constitutional Court that there were irregularities in the May 21 Elections.
Phiri who is also Democratic Progressive Party Director of Elections as well as Minister of Local Government in the Mutharika administration said this when he was cross-examined on Friday by Saulos Chilima’s lawyer Chikosa Silungwe.
In his testimony, Phiri admitted that there were irregularities such as the use of tippex, altered result sheets and duplicates instead of original result sheets.
During the cross-examination, Phiri was told to read a report by auditors which said that auditors rejected some of the results because of missing signatures of monitors.
According to the report Phiri read, MEC announced some results which were not verified by auditors.
MEC then directed that the rejected results be approved as long as they contained signatures of presiding officers.
During Friday’s sitting, Silungwe finished cross-examining Phiri.
Meanwhile, the court has adjourned the case to November 25th when lawyers for Malawi Congress Party president Lazarus Chakwera will cross-examine Phiri.
Hearing of the case is expected to be concluded on December 6.
Chilima and Chakwera want the court to nullify the results of the May 21 elections saying the outcome was affected by irregularities.
On Thursday, lawyer for Mutharika Samuel Tembenu asked the court to throw out the petition saying Chilima and Chakwera had failed to prove that the results were manipulated.
I understand that the minister of local government has been a God-fearing person.May be that is why he is agreeing with the truth that there were indeed irregularities in the MEC electoral process. He has even admitted that the now famous correctional fluid was indeed widely used. My humble question to the honourable minister as well as to the A.G., Justice Ansa, all opposition politicians, the incumbent President and all the learned lawyers and all interested persons, the question is, “Which commercial bank ever accepted to ‘cash’ a bank cheque that was clearly smeared with the correctional fluid called TIP-EX?” Assuming the majority answer is ‘IT IS UNHEARD OF THAT A REPUTABLE COMMERCIAL BANK WOULD ACCEPT TO CASH SUCH A CHEQUE’ for obvious professional reasons, mostly to safeguard its customers at large from fraudulent activities, let me for argument’s sake equate the professionalism levels of MEC to that of The Reserve Bank of Malawi, and if the RBM would sternly warn the commercial banks not to entertain altered or tip-exxed financial instruments, how on earth does it seem professionally acceptable for MEC to ‘cash’ electoral instruments aghast with alterations and heavily defaced with correction fluid? I don’t get it! Honourable Ben Phiri, I salute you for siding with the truth. I guess the Scripture that warns against being ‘False witnesses’ must have been nugging at the back of your mind. Keep it up servant of God.
What a beautiful place, keep on