Malawian Electoral Commission Seeks INEC’s Collaboration on Election Management

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) led by Justice Chifundo Kachale has sought the collaboration of the Nigerian Independent Nationa Electoral Commission (INEC) on the need to share insights and experience on management of election matters.

Speaking when he visited the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the MEC Chairman, Chifundo Kachale, said there is a lot of commonality in what they do as election management bodies, noting that the delimitation of constituencies and wards are some of the distinguishing features of the plurality system whereby representatives are chosen from discreet electoral constituencies with districts.

He said of particular importance why they have visited Nigeria was to learn how INEC has been able to manage its voter distribution, ethnicity, and legitimacy of the proportion of voters it requires to constitute a valid constituency.

According to him; “Just like in Nigeria, the issue of delimitation of the district is quite a sensitive issue. In our context, the last time we were able to do this successfully was in 1998. A similar attempt in 2004 was thwarted because of the political sensitivity of the process. Part of the challenge was that the activity was being conducted too close to the poll-and you know the sensitivity that arises. So that is why this time around we are trying to do this because our next general election has been scheduled for 2025.

“So we as a commission are mandated to undertake this process. We have been delayed in our calendar of implementing this because of the COVID-19 pandemic as you are aware. And in our concept, we shared with the commission and outlined some of the thoughts that have gone into identifying where we should go and learn. One of the issues we would love to learn from Nigeria as a commission is the issue of managing the voter distribution, as well as ethnicity, legitimacy of the proportion of voters that you require to constitute a valid constituency.

“In our law, the constitution mandates the commission to ensure that constituencies contained an equal number of voters in order to obviously promote the concept of one voter or one man one vote. However, because of demography and other geographic issues, it is always not easy to attain that ideal.”