The Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) has expressed the need for the Commission to have a protected fund to ensure smooth running of their operations.<\/p>\n
This comes after Mec postponed indefinitely a voter registration and verification exercise for local government by-elections initially slated for June 23 following government\u2019s delay in funding the polls within the current financial year.<\/p>\n
Mec Chief Elections Officer Willie Kalonga said it was unfortunate that at the moment, the Commission relies on the benevolence of government to conduct elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe expectation is that there will be a protected fund for the Malawi Electoral Commission the moment Parliament passes funding for the Commission. Those funds must be made available to the electoral body.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will help us because every time the Commission wants to conduct by-elections or any other electoral-related activities, we should not be going to the Treasury to beg,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kalonga also said begging money from the Treasury whenever the Commission wants to conduct elections was not in line with principles of independence of an institution such as Mec.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is why we want a protected fund, and it should not just be on paper,\u201d Kalonga said.<\/p>\n
The Malawi Electoral Support Network (Mesn) faulted government for failing to accord the local government by-elections proper attention.<\/p>\n
Mesn said government\u2019s conduct undermines the importance of local government structures in the consolidation of democracy apart from undermining the important role councils play in development projects.<\/p>\n
The election monitoring body further observed that the uncertainty undermines citizen participation and representation in that they are not fully involved in decision-making processes at local level.<\/p>\n
The by-elections are expected to be conducted in the following wards; Luchenza in Luchenza Municipal Council, Zomba Central in Zomba City Council, Msikisi in Mangochi Town Counci, Chibanja in Mzuzu City Council and Khwawa in Karonga District Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) has expressed the need for the Commission to have a protected fund to ensure smooth running of their operations. This comes after Mec postponed indefinitely a voter registration and verification exercise for local government by-elections initially slated for June 23 following government\u2019s delay in funding the polls within the current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2509,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions\/2509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}