The Special Law Commission on the Review of Electoral Laws has recommended wide sweeping changes to the electoral laws that would see, among others, the country adopting the 50+1 system for electing the president.<\/p>\n
In its final report presented in Lilongwe Wednesday, the commission said it found that the election of a president through the present \u2018first-past-the-post\u2019 mode has challenges regarding the legitimacy where the winner gets less than 50 percent of the total votes cast.<\/p>\n
With the exception of Bakili Muluzi in 1999 and Bingu wa Mutharika in 2009, none of the elections since 1994 elections have produced presidents with a 50+1 majority.<\/p>\n
According to the commission, it is necessary for legislation to provide that for a person to be declared a winner in a presidential election, they must amass 50+1 percent of the total votes cast.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, the commission recommends that the Constitution should be amended to provide that the president should be elected by a majority of more than 50 percent of the valid votes cast through direct, universal and equal suffrage and, where no such majority is obtained by any presidential candidate in the first poll, a second poll should be held in which the two presidential candidates who obtained the highest and second highest number of valid votes cast in the first poll should be the only candidates,\u201d the reports reads.<\/p>\n
Section 96 (5) of the Parliamentary and Presidential Elections Act provides that subject to the Act, in any election the candidate who has obtained a majority of votes shall be declared by the electoral commission to have been duly elected.<\/p>\n
In the report that special commission Chairperson Anthony Kamanga presented, the commission also recommends the amendment of relevant sections of the Constitution and other relevant legislation to provide for minimum educational qualifications for persons seeking elective office.<\/p>\n
Currently, the law does not provide for minimum educational qualifications for a person seeking to contest as candidate in presidential or local government elections but requires candidates for parliamentary seats to at least be able to speak and read English well enough for proceedings in Parliament.<\/p>\n
The commission recommends that presidential candidates and their running mates should be those with a minimum qualification of a first degree or its equivalent from a recognised or accredited institution.<\/p>\n
Candidates for Member of Parliament and councillor positions should be holders of Malawi School Certificate of Education and be able to speak and read English well enough to take part in proceedings in parliamentary and council meetings respectively.<\/p>\n
The commission has also proposed the amendment of Section 62 of the Constitution to add to the composition of the National Assembly each district in the country as a single member constituency in which only women shall contest as candidates for election as Members of Parliament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rationale is to ensure that women shall, in every case, occupy a certain minimum number of seats in the National Assembly,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n
The commission also recommends that Section 81 of the Constitution be amended to provide that the swearing in of the president and vice president elect be done after 30 days and not within 30 days as currently provided.<\/p>\n
The report also proposes the financial independence of the Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) through the establishment of Elections Management Fund.<\/p>\n
The commission then recommends that the chairmanship of Mec should not be a preserve of judges but a judge or any person qualified to be appointed as a judge nominated in that behalf by the Judicial Service Commission.<\/p>\n
The report recommends that legislation should provide for a scheme of appointment that is based on expertise to ensure that the process of appointment is technical and professional as opposed to political.<\/p>\n
Besides proposing the consolidation and harmonisation of all electoral laws to ensure that they speak to each other, the report proposes the introduction of six bills including Constitution (Amendment), Electoral Commission (Amendment), Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Elections, Elections Management Fund, Assumption of the Office of President and Referendum Bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Special Law Commission on the Review of Electoral Laws has recommended wide sweeping changes to the electoral laws that would see, among others, the country adopting the 50+1 system for electing the president. In its final report presented in Lilongwe Wednesday, the commission said it found that the election of a president through the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43532","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\/43532","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=43532"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43539,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43532\/revisions\/43539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}