By Vincent Gunde
A bona-fide citizen of Malawi Bantu Saunders Jumah the Utopian, says Africa is undergoing radical transformation for economic self -determination, Malawi was supposed to join its colleagues, but the country is delayed by internal squabbles just because few individuals and characters want to use their own failures as the failure of the nation.
Jumah says if Malawi is to test true democracy and see good governance, Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) be changed to become an Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and the government of the day and its leadership must not be the appointing authority of electoral office bearers including the chairperson.
He says election materials must be tandem with the facilities the country can afford such as manual registration, manual voting and counting until the country generates enough energy and has full internet access to switch to Electronic Management Devices (EMD)- Smartmartic machines.
Writing in a statement, Jumah says politics must be redefined from personal attacks to issue-based politicking, political violence must be criminalized with harsh sentence and political parties contesting in elections must not be players in the process of elections.
Jumah says until these principles are applied, elections in Malawi will never be free and fair saying if Meci s denying independent audit demanded by opposition political parties while the ruling party is not, this is clearly showing that government has a hand in whatever plot or trick Mec is hiding in the device of elections.
He says it is very disappointing and worrisome to see the President of Mozambique Daniel Chapo invited into the country when his elections in his country was disputed saying this invitation do not only present suspicion but indicating that the government of the MCP do not care about the electoral rules and is not a party to SADC and African Union as well as Global Electoral PACT.
“Mozambique is coming from the deepest Electoral fraud where hundreds died of government orchestrated violence by the FRELIMO Party of which Daniel Chapo is its President,” reads part of the statement.
Jumah says electoral disputes are not over yet Malawi as a democratic nation could not invite or host President Daniel Chapo until all Electoral disputes are resolved in his country saying this demand Malawi to redesign its policies to stop laying eggs of war.
He has expressed fears that as the situation stands, eggs of war have been laid and are now being hatched saying people in Malawi don’t want war, no war in Malawi-people want free, fair and credible elections.
