Malawi Congress Party (MCP) leader Lazarus Chakwera has claimed that there are fake voters in the Malawi Electoral Commission’s (MEC) voters’ roll and has demanded that it should be cleaned.
Chakwera made the remarks at press briefing in Lilongwe on Wednesday morning.
He said there is a criminal scheme at MEC as there are fake voters in the voters’ roll and these voters are created using the National Registration Bureau (NRB) database.
According to Chakwera, this is being done by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) which he also accused of collecting IDs from villagers across the country as part of the scheme.
Chakwera said a team of investigators followed a tip whereby a young man in Chikwawa identified as Ephraim took his ID to a MEC centre to register during phase one of the current registration exercise.
At the centre, Ephraim, who turns 18 in two weeks’ time and wants to vote for first, was shocked when he found that his ID number was already in MEC’s voters’ roll.
The ID number was under a different name and was included in the voter’s roll in 2018.
“This means someone at MEC stole Ephraim’s identity from NRB register in 2018 and used it to create a fake voter in the MEC voter’s roll for the 2019 elections,” said Chakwera.
Following investigations, the MCP team has found over 7000 minors with similar cases in the MEC’s voters’ roll.
Chakwera claimed that these minors’ ID numbers were used to create fake voters and these were used in the 2019 tripartite elections.
He added that DPP is trying to create more fake voters as it is now collecting more IDs ahead of the fresh presidential elections.
Chakwera then demanded that the MEC voters’ roll and the NRB database should be cleaned.
He said the MCP’s legal team will begin court action so that the NRB database should be disclosed, audited and cleaned.
“I have also asked the Director of Election to engage MEC and begin the process of auditing and cleaning the voters’ roll.
“We will not stop until the databases of both institutions are cleaned and we will not stop until those who have polluted them are brought to justice,” said Chakwera.
MEC will hold the fresh presidential elections on July 2 and the commission is currently conducting the second phase of the registration.
On February 3, the Constitutional Court nullified the 2019 presidential elections and ordered MEC to hold the fresh presidential polls. The Commission is appealing the Constitutional Court ruling.
