Mutharika wins elections
2004-05-23 16:11
Blantyre - President Bakili Muluzi's designated successor was declared the winner on Sunday of Malawi's third multiparty elections, even after the leader of an opposition coalition claimed victory in the irregularities-plagued presidential poll.
Bingu wa Mutharika of the ruling United Democratic Front won 1.1 million votes in Thursday's election, compared to 846 457 for John Tembo of the opposition Malawi Congress Party, electoral officials said.
Gwanda Chakuamba, who heads the seven-member Mgwirizano coalition, had 802 386 votes, while two other candidates trailed with less than 300 000 apiece, according to the official results.
Vote tampering denied
The announcement came after Chakuamba accused the Malawi Electoral Commission of tampering with the results of presidential and parliamentary voting to ensure victory for the ruling party.
He said late on Saturday that figures collected by independent observers and his own monitors put him clearly in the lead, with Tembo in second place and wa Mutharika in third.
Chief electoral officer Roosevelt Gondwe denied any vote tampering, saying it had taken time to verify the count in one of Africa's poorest countries.
While voting took place peacefully, frustration at the delay in releasing results boiled over into the streets of the economic center, Blantyre, on Saturday.
Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd and briefly detained 14 people. Protests also occurred in the capital, Lilongwe, and the northern city of Mzuzu.
Irregularities
Muluzi, Malawi's first democratically elected leader, hand-picked his economic planning minister to succeed him after he failed to alter the constitution to allow himself a third presidential term.
Thursday's vote was marred by irregularities before it even started. Voting was postponed by two days after the Mgwirizano coalition protested to the High Court that the voters roll had not been published for verification.
It claimed hundreds of thousands of names were missing from the list.
International observers, who gave the vote a partial endorsement, also noted problems during campaigning.
Just 3.1 million of the 5.7 registered voters cast ballots in the presidential poll, electoral officials said on Sunday.
- AP