Member of Parliament for Nkhatabay Central Symon Vuwa Kaunda wants Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to pay him K600 million compensation for the torture he suffered in defending his parliamentary seat.
Kaunda through his lawyer, Leonard Mbulo, has written MEC over the claim for compensation.
The letter says the money is for physiological trauma, shame and economic hardships which Kaunda suffered when he was defending the Nkhatabay Central parliamentary seat.
Kaunda has argued that this happened because of MEC’s negligence and recklessness in managing the 2019 parliamentary elections for Nkhatabay Central Constituency.
The parliamentarian has demanded that the money should be paid in 14 days, failure of which he will drag the commission to court.
In 2019, MEC declared Kaunda of the Democratic Progressive Party as winner of parliamentary elections in Nkhatabay Central with 6,418 votes against close Mhone’s 6,412.
Mhone challenged Vuwa’s election arguing that there were irregularities that affected the outcome.
However, the High Court Judge Thomson Ligowe in 2019 threw away the petition by Mhone saying there was no sufficient evidence that monitors were barred from signing result sheets or that votes in some centres were changed in Kaunda’s favour.
The High Court ruling forced Mhone to take the issue to the Supreme Court of Appeal where the he was successful.
In fresh elections held in June this year following the Supreme Court’s, Vuwa retained his seat after amassing 5,422 votes against Mhone’s 5,163 votes.
