United States Ambassador to Malawi, Virginia Palmer, has said Malawi can learn a lot from the way her country has conducted its elections where former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton engaged in a tight race with business mogul Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Trump, a Republican, eventually emerged winner in the heavily contested election and becomes America\u2019s 45th president.<\/p>\n
Observers say his victory might redefine America\u2019s future in terms of its foreign policy but Palmer hopes that there will be consistency in terms of America\u2019s policy in Malawi.<\/p>\n
The run-up to the election in the world\u2019s most powerful nation was characterised by numerous controversies bordering on political smear campaigns.<\/p>\n
In an interview at her official residence in Lilongwe\u2014where different officials witnessed the live broadcast of the election results progress\u2014Palmer said transparency and accountability are key to the success of any election.<\/p>\n
She added that even if one does not like the outcome of the results, it is important to accept that there can only be one winner and that voters need to have confidence that the results were achieved fairly.<\/p>\n
Election results in Malawi have been characterised by several complains of vote rigging with losers seldom accepting that it was not just their time yet.<\/p>\n
And Palmer said the process of elections being clean and transparent is \u201ccredibly important\u201d because it also cultivates confidence in a country\u2019s electoral system.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was saying to my Malawian guests who include election commissioners, politicians from different parties and others that Malawi has a great democratic tradition and transparency and accountability are key to the success of any system.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven when we know that the results are very close and even when there have been problems in the past American elections, the American people have faith in our institutions and I think that\u2019s what\u2019s most important,\u201d said Palmer.<\/p>\n
She added that it is important for all party representatives to have full access to the counting and the information regarding an election.<\/p>\n
Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) Chairperson, Justice Jane Ansah, said even though America is a big nation, it is amazing that election results reached the tally centre immediately after polling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can see that technology has played a very big role in the election. We don\u2019t have such advanced technology but we hope that we will reach there and that we will also conduct our elections in a similar manner,\u201d said Ansah.<\/p>\n
In his speech immediately after being declared winner, Trump said it is time for Americans to be united and put their country\u2019s interests first.<\/p>\n
He also disclosed that his rival, Clinton\u2014a democrat\u2014had called to congratulate him on his victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United States Ambassador to Malawi, Virginia Palmer, has said Malawi can learn a lot from the way her country has conducted its elections where former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton engaged in a tight race with business mogul Donald Trump. Trump, a Republican, eventually emerged winner in the heavily contested election and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":35293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35287","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\/35287","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=35287"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35294,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35287\/revisions\/35294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}