By Pemphero Malimba Political party leaders have recommended improvements to ensure equal treatment of candidates when the country is holding elections. This transpired during the 2025 General Election Review Meeting in Lilongwe Wednesday. The leaders were from the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Malawi Congress Party (MCP), UTM, United Democratic Front, People’s Party, among others. Through presentations made by groups which included leaders of leaders, delegates said some candidates, mainly those contesting on an independent ticket, faced unequal opportunities during the submission of nomination papers, the campaign period and polling exercises. “For example, some candidates were not allowed to submit their papers with their teams.
This happened while others were given a chance to arrive with [members of] their teams. Media coverage was not given to all presidential candidates. During polling, some candidates had more representatives than others. This created problems at polling centres,” one group of the leaders said.
One of the presidential candidates who stood on an independent ticket, Smart Swira, said there was a need for the authorities to ensure that independent candidates were given security and funding. Swira said this would ensure that there is fair play among presidential candidates. “If they are going to give leaders of other political parties security, fine; [but] they must also give me security because, in those 60 days of campaign, we are equal. Whether it is a sitting president or not, we are equal,” Swira said. The leaders further asked the Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) to ensure that it was recruiting non-partisan polling centre officials.
Maxwell Thyolera, a representative of MCP secretary general Richard Chimwendo Banda, urged Mec to consider amending requirements for conducting constituency demarcation processes. Thyolera said Mec needed to consider various factors when demarcating the issue of population. constituencies, apart from He said during the recent demarcation exercise, constituencies located in rural areas were affected as they had low numbers of people. Speaking earlier, Centre for Multiparty Democracy Chairperson Ben Chakhame urged political parties to express their concerns before 2029 to prevent challenges that arise a few months before the conduct of general elections. “This is the time to bring out issues that we think can help [in the management of] our elections in 2030, for the elections to be trusted and fair,” he said. He said there was also a need for political parties to agree on how technology should be used during elections. “We had issues with technology.
We need to agree on which areas the technology will be used for the 2030 General Election. We also need to look at how the working relationship between NRB [National Registration Bureau] and the electoral management body can be harnessed so that voter registration for voting in the general election is properly managed,” Chakhame said. Mec Chairperson, Judge Annabel Mtalimanja, said the meeting was part of a series of meetings that the commission has organised to review the conduct of the September 16, 2025 Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Elections. Mtalimanja said the conclusion of the meetings would culminate in a report that would explain all recommendations made by stakeholders. “This will culminate in a report for the 2025 General Election but, also, it’s going to inform whatever administrative and legal reforms we are going to put in place in liaison and consultation with all the relevant stakeholders for purposes of strengthening the institutional capacity of the commission as well as our stakeholders as we move towards the 2030 electrical cycle,” Mtalimanja said.
She said the post-election review exercise would be conducted until the end of this month. “Immediately after we are going to work on the report, administrative reforms are easy because those are internal processes but, in terms of legal reforms, we cannot put a timeframe because that involves broader consultations with the Ministry of Justice and, ultimately, should the legal reforms recommend amendments to the law, then that will have to involve Parliament and, certainly, we cannot put a timeframe on that,” Mtalimanja said.