{"id":75871,"date":"2019-03-21T10:54:04","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T08:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=75871"},"modified":"2019-03-21T10:54:04","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T08:54:04","slug":"ballot-papers-to-cost-k3-4-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2019\/03\/21\/ballot-papers-to-cost-k3-4-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballot papers to cost K3.4 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Stephen Dakalira:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_73016\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-73016\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/sangwani-mwafulirwa.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-73016\" src=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/sangwani-mwafulirwa-300x229.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"229\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/sangwani-mwafulirwa-300x229.jpg 300w, https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/sangwani-mwafulirwa-45x35.jpg 45w, https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/sangwani-mwafulirwa.jpg 479w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-73016\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">CONFIRMED THE DEVELOPMENT\u2014Mwafulirwa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As contestants engage an extra gear in their preparations for the May 21 Tripartite Elections, Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) is to spend approximately K3, 418,178,400 ($4,619,160) towards printing of ballot papers for the poll.<\/p>\n<p>This has been revealed by the electoral body when announcing results of a tender for the supply of ballot papers and other materials.<\/p>\n<p>Al Ghuriar Printing and Publishing LLC of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, has been entrusted with the responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>It is the same company that won a tender of a similar nature in Kenya worth $24.2 million but it was not without controversy as an employee of that country\u2019s electoral body was suspended following claims about flouting tender procedures.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cBidders who wish to be debriefed on this p<\/em>rocurement are kindly advised to write the commission through the undersigned within five days,\u201d reads the notice in part, which was floated in the local press.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Meanwhile, Mec Director of Media and Public Relations, Sangwani Mwafulirwa is dismissing as fake a ballot paper circulating on social media and has since urged the public to disregard the same.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cThis ballot paper sample is not from the Malawi Electoral Commission \u2026 The Commission will share a sample of the final template [without security features] for stakeholders to use for voter education at an appropriate time,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Mwafulirwa stressed that the Parliamentary and Presidential Elections Act guides that names of candidates should be arranged in alphabetical order of surnames.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Stephen Dakalira: As contestants engage an extra gear in their preparations for the May 21 Tripartite Elections, Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) is to spend approximately K3, 418,178,400 ($4,619,160) towards printing of ballot papers for the poll. This has been revealed by the electoral body when announcing results of a tender for the supply of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75871","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=75871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75875,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75871\/revisions\/75875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}