Malawi\u2019s former President Peter Mutharika has taken a comfortable lead in the country\u2019s presidential race, with two-thirds of districts having reported provisional results.<\/p>\n
The 85-year old has received around 66% of the valid votes counted so far, with his closest rival, the incumbent Lazarus Chakwera, 70, trailing on around 24%.<\/p>\n
Results declared so far indicate that Mutharika has won in areas known to be Chakwera strongholds, including the capital, Lilongwe, and Nkhotakota.<\/p>\n
But Chakwera\u2019s camp has not given up, saying that once results are declared from other areas, his vote will increase and he could force a run-off.<\/p>\n
A candidate needs more than 50% of the vote to be declared the winner, with Malawians eagerly awaiting the final result from last Tuesday\u2019s election.<\/p>\n
The Malawi Electoral Commission has until the end of Wednesday to announce it.<\/p>\n
At least two of the 12 districts still to declare results have a large number of registered voters, and Chakwera\u2019s camp believes he will do well there. These includes rural areas around Lilongwe and Dedza.<\/p>\n
Two other districts, where Mutharika is expected to do well, have had their results withheld by the electoral commission as it checks whether they are accurate.<\/p>\n
The commission said it was committed to transparency, accuracy and credibility.<\/p>\n
It added that it was carefully checking every tally sheet, after the constitutional court annulled Mutharika\u2019s victory in 2019 because of irregularities.<\/p>\n
Chakwera won the re-run by a wide margin, but during his presidency Malawi\u2019s economic crisis has deepened, with high inflation, food and fuel shortages and constant power cuts.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Chakwera\u2019s party said it had discovered \u201cirregularities\u201d and \u201cserious anomalies\u201d, and had asked the electoral commission to conduct a \u201cphysical audit\u201d of results. The party did not specify the irregularities.<\/p>\n
Police said eight data entry clerks had been arrested on accusations of trying to manipulate results.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi\u2019s former President Peter Mutharika has taken a comfortable lead in the country\u2019s presidential race, with two-thirds of districts having reported provisional results. The 85-year old has received around 66% of the valid votes counted so far, with his closest rival, the incumbent Lazarus Chakwera, 70, trailing on around 24%. Results declared so far indicate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}