Malawi ruling party claims tampering in vote count

Malawi's ruling party claimed on Friday that it had discovered irregularities in the vote count in nearly half the country's districts after this week's elections, while police announced the arrests of eight data clerks for allegedly tampering with results.

The 2019 presidential election was nullified because of widespread irregularities and officials in the largely poor southern African country want to avoid a similar scenario after Tuesday's general elections.

Both President Lazarus Chakwera's Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and its main rival, the Democratic Progressive Party of former president Peter Mutharika, claim to have won the presidential vote.

But observers said the indications were that Chakwera, 70, had lost his bid for a second term, with the economy in tatters and costs of living soaring during his first five years.

The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) released its first results on Friday, with the tallies from three out of four councils showing a strong lead for 85-year-old Mutharika.

Just before those disclosures, the MCP said at a press conference that its representatives had discovered "irregularities" in 13 of the country's 28 districts.

"The MCP has lodged a formal complaint to the MEC to conduct a physical audit, especially in areas where we discovered serious anomalies," Chakwera's running mate, Vitumbiko Mumba, said.

Mumba did not give specific details of the alleged anomalies.

Police said eight election data entry clerks had been arrested around the capital Lilongwe, suspected of "manipulating data".

The arrests came as investigations continued into the alleged attempted suicide of an election returning officer, a police statement said.

Reports said the official claimed to have been offered bribes to manipulate results.

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With the country on tenterhooks over the outcome of the vote, MEC chief Annabel Mtalimanja said the commission would not be pressured to speed up its verification work.

"We need to be meticulous," she told reporters. The commission has eight days since the vote to announce the final presidential result.

- Voting dashboards halted -

Malawi's constitutional court threw out the 2019 presidential election after correction fluid was detected on ballot papers. 

Chakwera comfortably won a rerun held the following year, beating Mutharika, who had been president and held a slim advantage in the annulled first take.

Confirming observations that Mutharika appeared to be in the lead this week, political scientist Boniface Dulani told AFP: "It's a vote against the president. It's not necessarily an endorsement of the former president."

At least four top Malawi broadcasters that had been running live dashboards of their unofficial voting tallies abruptly halted them on Friday without explanation.

"The media has been pressured from various quarters to stop live broadcasts, particularly the results dashboards," said the Media Institute of Southern Africa's (MISA) Malawi chairperson Golden Matonga.

"This will create an information vacuum. Disinformation can fill that vacuum, and the public can be misinformed," he told AFP, urging media outlets to resume their work "without yielding to any pressure from authorities or individuals". 

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