Mchinji women aspirants have called upon all civil society organizations to take the Political Parties Act to the populace so that people should know what it is all about.
This came out during a meeting organized by 50:50 campaign management agency with an aim of planning on how best they are going to conduct their campaign with the female aspirants till May 21st.
The women said since the law did not say what are handouts, this law needs to be well understood by both parties, that is male aspirants, people in the communities and the female aspirants themselves since if not well understood it can bring in misunderstandings between people.
The women said it will be unfortunate to see male aspirants practicing against the Political Parties Act while they will be acting according to the law.
One of the female aspirants Agness Mkusankhoma who is contesting on Malawi congress party ticket as a member of parliament for Mchinji South Constituency said this law is very tricky and needs one to understand it.
“We really need to know what is a handout and what is a campaign material since there are a lot of things that will be happening in our areas and people will not be differentiating between an incentive and a handout, and with what the 50:50 Campaign Management Agency has taught us will really help us during the campaign period,” said Mkusankhoma.
Campaign Management Agency Monitoring and Evaluation manager Chawezi Tembo said he believes that what the female aspirants have been taught will help them during the campaign period.
“As 50;50 campaign management agency we have done our best, we have levelled the ground so that come 21st May all the female aspirants should win, and through our donor and donor partners have tried to support them by reimbursing nomination fees and the process is still continuing, we thought that by doing that we will encourage a number of women to contest and that we have achieved that by having 304 women aspiring as members of parliament and 573 aspiring as councillors across the nation we are still working with them so that we can convert these figures into real decision making positions both at national and local assembly,” said Tembo.
