Elections

Last Tuesday, May 20, was Malawi's first ever tripartite elections. And in typical Malawian fashion things turned out to be confusing, chaotic, and altogether ineffective. The three main candidates were: The current president Joyce Banda representing the people's party (PP), professor Peter Mutarika with the democratic progressive party (DPP), and Lazarus Chikwela for Malawi congress party (MCP). Election Day went smoothly enough. Voters 18 and over took their IDs to the polls, got their fingers printed, and cast their vote. It was a good turnout and the voting stations stayed open late into the night. The next day everyone grouped around their radios as results started trickling in. As numbers started being announced it seemed that Mutarika  was sweeping the board. In all districts he was receiving significantly more votes than the other two candidates. But still less than 30% of the votes had been counted so no official result could be announced. A day or two into the counting, accusations of rigging started surfacing. People were accused of hacking phones to cast more votes. At one point it was discovered that in some districts there were more votes cast than there were registered voters in that district. Stating that it was because of the "irregularities" surrounding the voting, president Joyce Banda called for the whole election to be nullified and another election take place in 90 days. She also said that in the redo she would be running. Many people thought that this was an attempt to make Mutarika lose. Banda had previously tried Mutarika with treason when he attempted a coup to take over the government.  Now people believe that Banda is afraid of the revenge Mutarika might take if he gets office. Especially due to the fact that there was a major corruption scandal while Banda was in office that she could be held accountable for. Anyways, the nullification didn't happen as the Malawi electoral commission (MEC) decided that it was somehow unconstitutional. Instead they decided to do a manual recount of the votes. Mutarika got his lawyers to try to stop the recount. MEC said they couldn't recount yet anyway because the original votes weren't even counted yet. Meanwhile, there have been riots in some of the major cities, burning of party headquarters, and attempted suicides of ministers and government officials (one successful). As of today the news is that results from the original vote will be announced Friday. After which the recount will maybe take place. How that will be possible I don't know. The votes were turned in on pieces of paper and collected in baskets. Most votes have probably been lost or ruined at this point. As its looking now, it will probably be a while before we have a new president. 

Update: May 30th around 11pm Prof. Peter Mutarika was announced as the winner of the elections. Before the announcement there were more riots, fighting in the capital, and a shooting. I am very safe in my village and far away from any discord. Mutarika is definitely the people's favorite but seemed to be causing some problems within the government. So we will see how this announcement will affect things. And hopefully it will be the end of this election chaos.