Chairperson of the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC), Jane Ansah, has urged political parties to desist from using inflammatory language during campaign as it has the potential to incite political violence.
Ansah, who is also a judge at Supreme Court of Appeal, has warned that the commission will disqualify all candidates found promoting political violence.
She made these remarks at a National Elections Consultative Forum (NECOF) the Commission organized in Lilongwe on Friday.
“I would like to remind all political parties that the Commission has the powers to disqualify all candidates found perpetrating political violence in any way,” said Ansah.
She also noted that claims of election rigging can lead to voter apathy and reverberated her stance that MEC is ready to deliver free and fair elections on 21 May.
“The allegation of vote rigging have no basis to us because of our electorate system which is paper based. Votes will be written in figures and words at constituency level witnessed by all party monitors before being transmitted to the main tally centre,” said Ansah.
Echoing her stance, United Nations Development Program Chief Technical Advisor Richard Cox urged all political parties to rally behind MEC as it has already delivered “the cleanest voter register” in its history.
“MEC is ready to deliver free and fair elections. As UNDP, we have total confidence in MEC ever since we started working with them,” said Cox.
MEC organized the NECOF in order to give a report on the preparation of the forthcoming Tripartite Elections and the programmes the Commission has organized.
The Commission also revealed there will be no official broadcaster for this year’s elections and all official results related to elections will be announced by a commissioner to all media houses.
