{"id":78276,"date":"2019-05-23T03:45:53","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T01:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=78276"},"modified":"2019-05-23T03:45:53","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T01:45:53","slug":"lazarus-chakwera-leads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2019\/05\/23\/lazarus-chakwera-leads\/","title":{"rendered":"Lazarus Chakwera leads"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Peter Kanjere: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_78279\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-78279\" style=\"width: 387px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/chakwera-3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-78279\" src=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/chakwera-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"387\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/chakwera-3.jpg 387w, https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/chakwera-3-300x283.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 387px) 100vw, 387px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-78279\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lazarus Chakwera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Malawi Congress Party (MCP) torchbearer Lazarus Chakwera is leading in preliminary results of the presidential race, having realised 37.65 percent of the 1,436,400 presidential votes which Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) had received as of 8pm Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The 1,436,400 votes represent 35.67 percent of the overall 6.859,570 registered voters, Mec Chairperson Jane Ansah told the press in Blantyre Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>As we went to press, Chakwera had amassed 533,217 votes, followed by incumbent Peter Mutharika\u2019s 524,247 votes (37.01 percent), UTM\u2019s Saulos Chilima\u2019s 293,978 (20.76 percent) and United Democratic Front\u2019s Atupele Muluzi\u2019s (48,766 or 3.44 percent).<\/p>\n<p>The other presidential candidates Peter Kuwani of Mbakuwaku Movement for Development had earned 6,113 votes, translating to 0.43 percent, John Chisi of Umodzi Party (5,786 or 0.4 percent) and 0.30 percent for independent candidate Reverend Kaliya\u2019s 4,308 votes.<\/p>\n<p>Ansah, speaking at Mec\u2019s main tally centre at Comesa Hall, said there were also some null and void votes.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cOut of the total 1,436,400 votes cast, 1,416,415 are valid while 19,985 are null and void,\u201d<\/em> she said, adding that the commission had received complaints from some political parties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>She, however, warned other political parties against making inflammatory remarks.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cLeaders should not utter statements that would make people live in fear\u2026avoid statements that would imply claiming victory,\u201d<\/em> Ansah said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Mec\u2019s statement came after Chakwera had, during a press conference he hosted in Blantyre, challenged the commission to iron out some anomalies noted in the electoral process, saying it was clear that he was leading in the presidential race.<\/p>\n<p>Mec will release official results, including for councillors and members of Parliament within eight days from Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The preliminary results are from 1,784 polling centres out of 5,002.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Peter Kanjere: Malawi Congress Party (MCP) torchbearer Lazarus Chakwera is leading in preliminary results of the presidential race, having realised 37.65 percent of the 1,436,400 presidential votes which Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) had received as of 8pm Wednesday. The 1,436,400 votes represent 35.67 percent of the overall 6.859,570 registered voters, Mec Chairperson Jane Ansah [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":78280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78276","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\/78276","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=78276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78281,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78276\/revisions\/78281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}