Democracy Works Foundation has expressed its commitment to ensuring that political parties are well prepared with meaningful and strategic preparation and participation in the electoral process.
The organization’s regional director, Augustine Magolowondo, said they intend to strengthen political parties with capacity, knowledge and skills when it comes to monitoring the electoral process.
“We will be investing in that, but we will also continue to strengthen the political parties role when it comes to conducting their campaigns more issue-based and more policy-based,” said Magolowondo
According to Magolowondo, this will be done using experiences the organization has through the network of experts.
He said, “As you know, the Democracy Works Foundation is not just working in Malawi. We are doing this and we’ve been doing this in other countries, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Angola, South Africa, so we have a lot of regional experiences”.
The remarks have been made on the sidelines of a multi-stakeholder dialogue on Friday in Lilongwe, which was organized by Democracy Works Foundation to reflect on and draw lessons from the past elections to improve the 2025 electoral process.
National director of elections at the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD), David Brown Katete, commended DWF for bringing together various officials involved in the electoral process, including officials from the Malawi Electoral Commission MEC and the National Registration Bureau NRB.
Katete urged MEC to come out clearly on the issue to do with hybrid or machine results transmission.
He then urged NRB to ensure that they are also issuing new IDs to eligible citizens in all voter registration centres.
“NRB has just established some centres in districts, not in all centres where MEC is operating. This is also a problem because others are complaining they are having challenges in dealing with the registration process. So we are urging NRB to fully comply with the court order and that they should be operating side by side with MEC because no person can travel 10 kilometres or 8 kilometres to register with NRB,” he said.
In a separate interview, MEC chairperson Justice Anabel Mtalimanja assured all stakeholders, including political parties, that the commission will engage them regarding the results transmission process.
