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Zipani zotsutsa boma m’dziko muno zati mayi Annabel Mtalimanja atule pansi udindo wawo ngati mkulu wa Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) kaamba koti alephera kugwira bwino ntchito. Zipanizi zidanena izi pa msokhano wa atolankhani omwe zipani monga Alliance For Democracy (AFORD), United Transformation Movement (UTM), Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) anachititsa ku Lilongwe. Zipanizi zinati ndizokaikitsa ngati […]
The post Mtalimanja atule pansi udindo – Zipani zotsutsa appeared first on Malawi 24.
\t On Friday, internet and international calls were cut off across the West African nation in anticipation of the election results, according to locals and international observers in the capital, Conakry.
\t This was the third time that Conde matched-up against Diallo. Before the election, observers raised concerns that an electoral dispute could reignite ethnic tensions between Guinea's largest ethnic groups.
[Monitor] Ruhinda South MP Donozio Mugabe Kahonda, has withdrawn the lawsuit in which he was seeking to block the Electoral Commission (EC) from scrutinising his nomination.
The opposition has won Malawi’s historic rerun of the presidential election, the first time a court-overturned vote in Africa has led to the defeat of an incumbent leader.
President Peter Mutharika, who had sought a second five-year term, earlier Saturday called the rerun of the election “the worst in Malawi’s history.”
Malawi’s drama was just the second time in Africa that a court has overturned a presidential election, following a ruling on Kenya’s vote in 2017.
As Malawi prepared for its new vote, incumbent Vice President Saulos Chilima, who split last year’s results with Chakwera, decided instead to stand as his running mate in a bid to maximize chances of unseating Mutharika.
An attempt by Mutharika’s government to get Malawi’s chief justice to step down just days before the new election had failed amid an outcry.
Ugandans are engaged in heated debates over the merits, possibilities and effectiveness of participating in what is being popularly referred to as a ‘scientific election’.
The East African country is scheduled to hold presidential, parliamentary and local government elections next year.
The electoral commission last week told the nation to prepare for an unusual election where campaigning will be done digitally, as the destabilizing effects of the coronavirus continue.
Justifying scientific elections
Uganda which currently has over 700 confirmed cases of the coronavirus has been slowly easing restrictions and emphasizing measures of social distancing for all activities in the country.
The commission says it is bound by Article 61 (2) of Uganda’s constitution which tasks it to organize elections within 120 days before the expiry of the term of president, parliament or local government.
In conducting a scientific election, the commission hopes to exercise its duty to facilitate Ugandans’ right to choose their leaders in a healthy and safe environment.
How it will be conducted
Aspirants at all levels will only be able to conduct campaigns electronically via television, radio and social media, since open-air public rallies have been banned.
“This is because electoral activities involve public gatherings and hence pose high COVID-19 risk of person-to-person and object-to-person transmissions,” the commission explained in a statement.
The three months of a lockdown imposed since March across the country also means that some activities will have to be accomplished in a much shorter time.
With hardly six months to the elections scheduled to be held between January and February next year, political parties are yet to nominate flag-bearers for the different offices that will be contested.
Voting itself is to be conducted normally, with president Yoweri Museveni telling the nation on Monday that government can effectively ensure social distancing and other precautionary measures at polling stations.
“… the gathering for the elections themselves, can be safely managed with hand-washing, social-distancing or leaving gaps of the necessary metres between voters in line,” Museveni said.
“This would remove the uncertainty that would be created by the postponement of the elections but also ensure that elections are held safely. I call upon Ugandans to support this option.”
Ugandans react
Key stakeholders in the electoral process including leaders of political parties and the voters themselves have shared mixed reactions to the electoral commission’s proposal.
While the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) has welcomed the proposal and says it will adjust its programme accordingly, many in the opposition say the commission is playing into the hands of incumbent Museveni and other powerful NRM politicians.
The opposition politicians accuse the electoral commission of not consulting them as it drafted the revised election roadmap. According to the popular legislator and presidential hopef
Police recovered 14 guns in Princes Town on Friday, the third major seizure in recent weeks.
A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a 44-year-old businessman in connection with the illegal guns.
In a statement, the police said a search warrant was executed at the home of a suspect at St Croix Road around 1.40 pm. The search was done in the presence of the female relative, police said.
Police said they recovered four AK-47 rifles, one Draco rifle, three M4 rifles, five AR pistols, a Ruger Precision 308 rifle, 14 lower receivers, six rifle magazines, a pistol magazine, a flash suppressor and one round of 7.62-millimetre ammunition.
The exercise was spearheaded by ACP Oswain Subero, Snr Supts Roger Alexander and Earl Elie, and Supt Spence, co-ordinated by ASP Anand Ramesar and supervised by Insp Forbes.
The search involved officers from Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), with the assistance of members of the Canine Unit.
In October, two sets of illegal firearms were recovered in Santa Cruz. Those two finds followed the gun attack against deputy prisons commissioner Sherwin Bruce at his Barataria home.
Bruce's daughter and his driver, Steve Phitt, 49, were shot in that incident.
The lone suspect who was charged in that incident, Emmanuel Joseph, died in the prison on October 21, hours after he appeared in court charged with two offences of attempted murder and gun related charges.
An autopsy found that Joseph died of shock and haemorrhage, poly-trauma and blunt force trauma.
Joseph was expected to be laid to rest on Saturday.
The post Police seize 14 guns in Princes Town, warrant out for suspect appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.
Candidates seeking electoral positions in Uganda's general election due early next year will have to conduct their campaigns without physical contact as dictated by Covid-19 social and physical distancing, the Electoral Commission has announced.
The commission, which released a new roadmap of electoral activities, has set November 2 and 3, 2020 as nomination dates for Presidential candidates.
NO POSTPONING ELECTION
Article 61(2) of the Constitution provides that the \"Electoral Commission shall hold general presidential, parliamentary and local government council elections within the first thirty days of the last ninety days before the expiration of the term of the President.\"
Responding to questions about calls for postponing the election to give all candidates a fair chance in light of the Covid-19 disruption, Mr Byabakama said, \"The option of postponing the election has not even occurred to us as a commission because it is not in our mandate.
Mr Byabakama added that the commission's mandate is limited only to state (public) media which is required to give equal space to all presidential candidates.
Malawi’s electoral commission appealed for “peace and calm” on Wednesday as it counted ballots following a historic poll to re-elect a president after Peter Mutharika’s victory was overturned.
Voters in Malawi went to the polls on Tuesday for the second time in just over a year after the Constitutional Court dramatically ruled that last year’s polls were fraught with “grave and widespread” irregularities.
Results from the May 2019 election sparked countrywide protest that lasted months, a rare occurrence in the impoverished southern African country.
It took the top court six months to sift through the evidence before concluding that Mutharika was not duly elected and ordered fresh elections.
The chairman of the Malawi Electoral Commission, Chifundo Kachale, said tallying of the votes from 5,002 polling stations was underway.
“We appeal to Malawians to maintain peace and calm as the vote-counting continues,” Kachale told a news conference in Blantyre.
Mutharika has accused the opposition of inciting violence following isolated incidents which the police and electoral commission said had not affected the election.
“It’s obvious that the opposition is doing this,” he told reporters after voting in Blantyre, claiming some of his party monitors were “chased away, some were beaten”.
“It’s obviously people that are afraid of the will of the people that are engaging in these barbaric acts,” he alleged.
Mutharika, 79, did not take the decision of the constitutional court lightly when it overturned last year’s poll.
He accused judges of working with the opposition to steal the election through what he dubbed a “judicial coup d’etat”.
He had narrowly won the now-discredited election with 38.5 percent of the ballots, beating his closest rival Lazarus Chakwera, 65, by just 159,000 votes .
Victory in the rerun will be determined by whoever garners more than 50 percent of the votes — a new threshold set by the top court.
Some 6.8 million people were asked to vote between Mutharika, Chakwera and an underdog candidate, Peter Dominico Kuwani.
The electoral commission has until July 3 to unveil the results, although the announcement is widely thought likely to come this week.
Kachale says the commission will only announce results after dealing with all the complaints.
AFP
The post Opposition wins historic rerun of Malawi’s presidential vote appeared first on Los Angeles Sentinel.
Legendary college basketball coach Bob Knight has passed away at the age of 83. Knight’s family made the announcement Wednesday night after his poor health in the last few years led to him being hospitalized with an illness in April. “It is with heavy hearts that we share that Coach Bob Knight passed away at […]
Malawi’s Supreme Court confirmed Friday that last year’s presidential elections remain nullified and a fresh vote held in July.
The Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling by the southern African nation’s Constitutional Court that President Peter Mutharika’s 2019 election was invalid because of widespread irregularities.
The Supreme Court also said it wanted the election to be held earlier but “reluctantly” agreed with the Constitutional Court’s initial time frame, so the date of the new vote remains July 2.
That puts into question President Mutharika’s decision to pick Atupele Muluzi, the son of former President Bakili Muluzi, as his running mate for any new elections this year.
Muluzi, who is leader of the opposition United Democratic Front, stood against Mutharika in last year’s elections although he was also a member of his cabinet.
Violence rocked Guinea's capital Conakry on Friday as supporters of opposition leader Cellou Diallo clashed with security forces who tried to disperse them.
They threw stones and blocked roads. Police responded with teargas and bullets. The clashes erupted as soon as provisional results released by the electoral commission showed president Alpha Conde winning with a big margin.
Conde, 82, won twice as many votes as his nearest rival, opposition candidate Cellou Dalein Diallo, with 37 of 38 districts counted, according to preliminary results from the commission.
Opposition supporters accuse the electoral authorities of rigging the vote for incumbent president Alpha Conde.
Sekou Koundouno, head of mobilisation for the opposition coalition FNDC said Conde had committed 'high treason'.
\"He is an illegal and illegitimate candidate who is stubbornly pursuing his obsession to turn Guin ea into a monarchy in which, by the way, he will dictate orders to his subjects,\" said Kounduno.
Diallo maintains that he won with a landslide despite irregularities, according to his own tally. He remains barricaded in his home which security forces have besieged since Monday.
ICC warning
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor warned on Friday that warring factions in Guinea could be prosecuted after fighting erupted.
“I wish to repeat this important reminder: anyone who commits, orders, incites, encourages and contributes in any other way to crimes … is liable to prosecution either by the Guinean courts or the ICC,” she said.
#ICC Prosecutor #FatouBensouda: "I wish to repeat this important reminder: anyone who commits, orders, incites, encourages or contributes, in any other way, to the commission of #RomeStatute crimes, is liable to prosecution either by #Guinean courts or by the #ICC."
— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) October 23, 2020
Many people have been killed since clashes began on Monday. Scores too had been killed in the run up to the vote as protestors marched against Conde's bid for a third term.
Malawi could for the first time ever hold the presidential election without international observers.
Head of European Union (EU) mission to Malawi has confirmed that his organization would not be sending its team as they have done in the past elections.
The country's enstranged vice-president and UTM Party president Saulos Chilima said the role of international election observers should be redefined before the court sanctioned fresh election, saying the country does not need what he called \"election tourists.\"
EU, AU, Sadc, Commonwealth and other observer teams certified the May 21, 2020 tripartite election free, fair, credible and transparent but the Constitutional Court annulled it on grounds that it was marred with massive and widespread anomalies.
Many commentators have echoed Chilima's statement which puts on trial the international observers who moved fast to sanitize fraud,\"alleging that international groups had favored \"status quo and 'stability' ahead of credible elections.\"
ARTICLE 19: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 4 November 2020: ARTICLE 19 strongly condemns excessive use of force by security forces and the riots by supporters of political parties in the aftermath of the presidential election in Guinea. At least 21 people were killed, including three children, hundreds of people wounded and [Read More]
State Vice President and UTM leader Saulos Chilima has resumed his famous whistle-stop campaign christened imbizo tours on Friday with his first two stops at Kampepuza and Ntcheu Boma - venues dubbed as his home ground - where hundreds of people attended as Chilima campaigned for opposition Tonse Alliance in the forthcoming fresh presidential elections.
A the two venues, Chilima, who is also running mate to Dr. Lazarus Chakwera who is presidential candidate for the UTM/MCP alliance, urged people to never ever be fooled again by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leadership which he described as a failure.
Chilima said the DPP is always good at using people and dumping them, citing the example of Everton Chimulirenji who partnered Mutharika in the nullified 2019 elections but has been dumped.
Chilima also cautioned the leadership of the DPP/UDF alliance to be responsible and stop bringing issues of religion on the campaign trail.
Of late the DPP/UDF alliance has been telling people that Dr. Chakwera and Dr. Chilima will ban Islam in Malawi once elected into office.
Thanks to Digital Commons at Columbia College in Chicago, unedited footage from the \"Jamsie Project\" featuring Crucian James “Jamesie” Brewster, known as the legendary “King of Scratch,\" has been uploaded online and is free for the public to view.
The observers recognise that an electoral system governed by a whole series of constantly changing pieces of legislation \"responds to the outcome of political dialogue between the main parties, Renamo and Frelimo, rather than taking a holistic review of the electoral framework.\"
Stop the inclusion of fraudulent results: Under Renamo pressure, the parties agreed an electoral court system which could intervene to redress misconduct and errors by election commissions, STAEs, and polling stations.
Civil society members to be non-partisan
Members of the National Elections Commission (CNE) \"do not represent the public or private institutions or political or social institutions they come from, and defend the national interest\", says the electoral law.
For the 2008-9 elections, parliament (AR) agreed a dramatic change - a majority of CNE members, including the chair (presidente) were nominated by Civil Society Organisations (CSO) to try to force some independence and neutrality.
But this agreement between Frelimo and Renamo to select party aligned CSO members is not specified in the electoral law and clearly goes against the spirit of the law.
A law expert has said the resignation of Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chairperson Jane Ansah just weeks into a crucial presidential election has plunged the country into yet another electoral crisis.
Justine Dzonzi: Fresh elections are court sanctioned polls therefore do not disrupt the electoral process
Justin Dzonzi of Justice Link says it will not be possible for a new commission to hold an election in two weeks' time.
The term of office for Ansah--a judge of the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal--was set to expire in October this year while that for her eight commissioners is ending on June 5 this year
\"This means in two weeks' time, we will have no commission at all.
\"Take into account that we will have an election on 23 June, this is an electoral crisis,\" he said.
The judgment was upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeal, the country's top judicial authority, after an appeal by Mutharika and the electoral body.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Jane Frances Abodo has said her office was reluctant to sanction charges of being a nuisance against former Makerere University Research Fellow, Dr Stella Nyanzi last recently.
Counsel Walubiri had argued that it was high time the office of the DPP withdrew cases that have over stayed in the justice system like the treason case against Dr Kizza Besigye.
\"Perhaps, this is the time for the office of the DPP to weed out some files that have been pending in the criminal justice system for long as the same are clogging the system for no good reason,\" Mr Walubiri said.
DPP Abodo said she is determined to weed out undeserving cases from the justice system starting with those arrested during the ongoing lockdown.
Ms Winfred Adukule, the executive director of Freechild Uganda, urged the office of the DPP and the Judiciary not to forget about the juvenile justice in this Covid-19 lockdown.
Monday's driving rain and cold wind are just a taste of what is to come, with snow predicted for the mountains of the Western Cape, the higher ground of the Eastern Cape, and the southern heights of the Northern Cape on Tuesday.
The SA Weather Service warned that there would be more snow and gale force winds on Tuesday morning - and, for those at sea, there would be high seas.
\"The first cold front for the winter made landfall early this morning in Cape Town,\" said James-Brent Styan, spokesperson for Anton Bredell, the MEC for local government in the Western Cape.
\"It has brought stormy, cold and wet weather, reinforced by gale force winds across large parts of the province,\" he said.
\"We're happy to see some wet weather in the Western Cape because it means our dam levels will get a much-needed boost.
