The Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) has said it will not allow accredited civil society organisations (CSOs) to engage in partisan political activities in the 2019 tripartite elections.
\nMec Chairperson, Jane Ansah, said the CSOs must remain neutral to assist the electoral body in fulfilling its mandate.
\n\u201cAs a commission, we will not permit, condone, accommodate, pardon, forgive or entertain anyone [accredited CSOs] that engages in political activities, and [Mec] will not hesitate to sever ties with such organisations,\u201d Ansah said when she presented certificates to the accredited CSOs in Lilongwe.
\nAnsah asked the CSOs to observe the electoral Code of Conduct and relevant electoral laws.
\nMec has accredited 110 organisations after what it called \u201ca rigorous process of scrutiny of the applications\u201d that involved vetting registration certificates as well as making physical visits to establish if the organisations existed.
\nThe CSOs have been accredited to conduct civic and voter education.
\n\u201cAs accredited CSOs there is need to develop activities that will assist the commission to conduct free, fair and credible elections, by coming up with programmes that will increase voter turnout,\u201d she said.
\nAnsah has urged the CSOs to focus on civic educating and encouraging women who, ironically, are those that vote most yet they form a minority of candidates.
\n\u201cThe youth who regard voting as being not cool should be encouraged to vote and other marginalised groups such as the elderly and people with disabilities should have programmes specially tailored for them,\u201d she said.
\nMc Arthur Matukuta of Solomonic Peacocks, one of the accredited CSOs said they are ready to carry out their duties in conducting credible voters\u2019 civic education.
\n\u201cWe have different programmes and ideas outlined to reach out to masses in the country so that they are aware of what is expected of them before we reach 2019 elections,\u201d Matukuta said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) has said it will not allow accredited civil society organisations (CSOs) to engage in partisan political activities in the 2019 tripartite elections. Mec Chairperson, Jane Ansah, said the CSOs must remain neutral to assist the electoral body in fulfilling its mandate. \u201cAs a commission, we will not permit, condone, accommodate, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":55053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57264","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\/57264","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=57264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57267,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57264\/revisions\/57267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}