After failing to elect a Mayor last week Wednesday, Kasungu Municipal Council finally has a new Mayor.<\/p>\n
Last week mayoral polls which other quarters said were marred by irregularities saw two rounds of voting resulting in ties.<\/p>\n
The contest was between Councillor, Ireen Katola of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Councillor, Benedict Chiponda of Malawi Congress Party (MCP).<\/p>\n
Katola, who represents Kavunguti Ward, retained the seat of Mayor with six votes against Chankhanga Ward Councillor Chiponda\u2019s four.<\/p>\n
During her acceptance speech, Katola said her triumph does not mean enmity with other councillors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thank God for what has transpired. I really promise to work with all the councillors in the council. My win doesn\u2019t mean that the other councillors are my enemies, we are all one,\u201d said Katola.<\/p>\n
The seat of Deputy Mayor has gone to MCP\u2019s Hlupekire Chabvundikira who got five votes against fellow MCP councillors Alex Ndolo\u2019s four votes and Annie Kafoteka\u2019s one vote.<\/p>\n
Before the polls on Tuesday, Director of Local Government Services in the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Kisswell Dakamawu, gave guidance on how the polls were to proceed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMay oral polls are council meetings, therefore the meeting should be handled as all council meetings. No non-council member should take over,\u201d he advised.<\/p>\n
Among the changes made on Tuesday, were barring non-council members from speaking during the polls and changing of the venue from the Municipal Council to the District Council Chamber.<\/p>\n
The change was made because the, Municipal Council Chamber is smaller than the District Council Chamber, which is spacious, giving room to the councillors to be comfortable while casting their votes.<\/p>\n
The elections were graced by DPP regional governor for the centre, Dean Josiah Banda, among other top party officials and also Members of Parliament from the MCP, among them Madalitso Kazombo.<\/p>\n
As it is, DPP has now three mayoral seats in the country, MCP and People\u2019s Party have one each.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After failing to elect a Mayor last week Wednesday, Kasungu Municipal Council finally has a new Mayor. Last week mayoral polls which other quarters said were marred by irregularities saw two rounds of voting resulting in ties. The contest was between Councillor, Ireen Katola of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Councillor, Benedict Chiponda of Malawi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39247","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\/39247","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=39247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39250,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39247\/revisions\/39250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}