Point of order! Mutharika-Chilima never won 2014 election – MCP’s Onani 

Dedza South member of Parliament (MP) Ishmael Ndaila Onani (Malawi Congress Party) has said President Peter Mutharika  – whose running mate was Saulos Chilima – was not duly elected  in 2014 elections on whose mandate he is carrying out now.

Onani said this in Parliament on Wednesday when he stood on a point of order  after Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Bright Msaka mocked the opposition saying they only win elections in court and not on the ballot.

Said Onani:“Madam Speaker, is it in order for the Minister of Justice to say that the opposition has never won an election? Yet we know that from the court ruling, even Peter Mutharika way back in 2014 never won —because he never maintained a 50 plus 1 majority.

“ And on top of that, Peter Mutharika never made it to this House just last week because he never won in 2019. So, is it in order for him to claim that he won yet he has never won?”

The lawmaker continued:“ Peter Mutharikahas never won an election in Malawi. “

However, Speaker Catherine Gotani Hara said the point of order raised by Onani is  I “ an issue of opinion.”

Mutharika became Head of State after defeated Joyce Banda in 2014.

Banda disputed the 2014 elections  and  ordered the annulment of  the results and scheduled a new election in 90 days’ time, insisting that the election had been so deeply flawed that she could not possibly inflict its results on the Malawian people.

She promised at the same time that she would not run in the new elections.

The 2014 elections were flawed that even the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) acknowledged and ordered a manual recount, citing voter irregularities in some parts of the country. Particularly troubling were reports of votes counted significantly exceeding registered voters in some areas.

Banda’s plan to annul the vote results, however, was foiled by an outcry from pretty much everyone involved in the election, most significantly the MEC, which pointed out that the president – especially a competing candidate – does not have the constitutional power to summarily annul an election.

Judge Kenyatta Nyirenda of the Hig Court upheld this bit of common sense, but made another bizarre decision, telling the MEC that it had to announce the compromised result before conducting a recount. This came at the behest of Peter Mutharika’s Democratic People’s Party, which said that it was worried about the security of ballot boxes after voting was concluded.

Later ballot boxes were torched at a MEC  warehouse  when Mutharika had already taken power.

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