The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) reported that, to date, it has not received any formal request for a scoped audit from political parties or electoral stakeholders ahead of the September 16, 2025 elections.
MEC Chairperson Annabel Mtalimanja announced this on Wednesday when presenting a comprehensive state of preparedness report for the forthcoming 2025 General Elections.
“The commission would like to report that, to date, it has not received any such request from any of the political parties or electoral stakeholders,” said Mtalimanja.
Meanwhile, Mtalimanja said the commission is aware that some electoral stakeholders have cited the Commission’s engagement of BDO in the 2019 Tripartite Elections, as justification for their call for an audit of the EMS.
However, she asserted that what has been demanded so far is a huge departure from the scope of the audit, which was conducted by BDO in 2019.
“Allow me to mention that BDO was specifically contracted to conduct in agreed upon procedure of Malawi 2019 Tripartite Elections to verify that the results received at the constituency Tally Centre are mathematically correct results before MEC makes an official announcement of the results”.
She further reaffirmed MEC’s position that any such audit of the Election Management System must be based on a clearly defined scope, anchored on specific irregularities or anomalies.
Without such a scoped request, and given potential security risks, she said, the commission cannot accede to demands for an unframed audit.
During the meeting with different Election Stakeholders, MEC announced that all challenges encountered during voter registration were rectified.
Since the announcement that elections will be handled by Smartmatic, there has been noise from different opposition parties, arguing that the private audit is essential to verify the integrity, safety and reliability of the system in safeguarding voter information, in particular, the inclusion of names and other sensitive data.
By Eric Chiputula
