Many Malawians have failed to look deeper and reflect on some of the reasons why the MCP has remained completely silent on the issue that other political parties have been pushing for — the audit of the MEC voters’ roll. You should really be surprised by this.
MCP is one of the parties contesting these elections. Anything happening at MEC that does not benefit them, MCP can easily challenge it. MCP will never allow fair play where they see a chance to manipulate the system.
Now, let us discuss the relationship between the NRB (National Registration Bureau), MEC, and the Smartmatic System. Here in Malawi, we all know that the personal details of citizens are collected by the NRB, which also issues national IDs certifying a person’s age.
The Smartmatic System cannot function without MEC, and MEC cannot have citizens’ details without the NRB. Now here’s the issue: within the Smartmatic System, the voters’ roll will be uploaded — a roll linked to MEC — which will need to tally with the details that NRB holds.
NRB will provide biometric data, and within the MEC & Smartmatic system, this data will be used for verification and registration matching. The danger is this: if political parties gain access to audit this system, they might find several irregularities that will raise questions.
The National Registration Act No. 13 of 2010, which became operational on 1 August 2015, gave NRB powers transferred from the Registrar General’s office. This means that from birth, NRB stores every citizen’s details, including the exact date of birth.
Remember, MCP in the central region registered many underage children. MEC alone could not have detected underage registrants without verification from NRB. Likewise, NRB alone could not have challenged people who forced minors to register. This is a matter that could be proven after an audit.
This is one of the reasons MCP supports the idea of preventing an audit — because the results would obviously reveal many duplicates. For example, “Elitifodi Pamuleni” might appear twice: one aged 14 and another aged 22. Do you understand what I’m unpacking here?
Another issue is this talk about counting results using both electronic and manual methods — that is nonsense. It’s a complete scam. Here’s what could happen: these people might penetrate so deep that they even infiltrate our security services.
The hardcopy results transferring process could be tampered with in many ways — through fraud, confusion, or other means — causing MEC to later say, “We used both electronic and manual methods, but since the manual process was compromised, let’s rely on the electronic results saved in the system.” By doing this, it would be manipulation and a destruction of this country.
The electronic method is something we shouldn’t even be considering. In 2019 we used manual. In 2020 manual. Now that Chakwera is in government, why are we shifting to electronic? Do you know it is easier for an ordinary citizen to detect election rigging with manual methods than with electronic ones?
Do you know that the electronic method is only understood by IT experts? And even then, Smartmatic could still manipulate them to the point where even experts fail to detect tampering?
But through all this, MCP remains silent. And when they choose to speak, they just support the idea that we should use Smartmatic.
ASK THEM WHY.
