Outspoken Minister of Civic Education, Culture and Community Development Grace Chiumia who is also the senior member in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on Sunday attacked the members of clergy especially for pressurizing the Executive and Parliamentarians to table the electoral reform bills in the current sitting of Parliament.
The member of the clergy through their organization, Public Affairs Committee (PAC) petitioned President Peter Mutharika and Speaker of Parliament to table the bill and gave them seven days ultimatum to address their concern as promised.
After failing to abide to the petition, PAC organized a peaceful demonstration on 13 December, 2017 as part of expressing its anger.
Due to the development, Minister Chiumia has described the members of the clergy as bunch of confusionists.
Speaking during a political rally in Mpherembre in Mzimba West Constituency, Chiumia said Malawi was not ready for the electoral reforms that support electing a President by majority, saying it will be waste of resources.
She said: “There is this clergy group called PAC which wants to confuse people on elections as they are advocating for the 50 percent plus one system in electing the President. We have seen how problematic this system has been in other countries because every time a candidate doesn’t get the required votes, then a rerun takes place, which is expensive.”
“Let me tell PAC [that it] is a group of confused religious leaders and they are going to town to confuse the nation on how elections are run in this country,” she added.
Chiumia said money meant for presidential reruns should be used for development agenda.
“I urge you people of Mzimba West, let us all reject this proposal. Join the President so that these people don’t confuse you. Reject this,” she said.
Chiumia continued: “As government, we don’t support this. We don’t want it.”
One of the electoral reforms the Malawi Law Commission proposed for parliamentary consideration is that the President must be elected by at least 50 percent plus one vote cast in a presidential election.
Currently, a presidential winner is declared when a candidate obtains more votes than his or her competitors. It is not necessary that he or she obtains more than 50 percent of the votes or more than two-thirds of the votes. It is therefore possible where a presidential contest is overcrowded by candidates that a President could be elected by as low as 20 percent of the votes cast as long as that percentage exceeds the respective shares other candidates have obtained.
Meanwhile PAC has vowed to go ahead with its demonstration.
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