Malawi: Elections Marred with Controversy as Minister Shoots Himself
By Staff Writer
LILONGWE - Malawian Deputy Minister for Local Government, Geoffrey Kamanya shot himself dead, on Thursday, as vote counting continued in the Southern African nation’s Tuesday general elections.
Quoting police, BBC says the minister shot himself in wee hours of the morning at his home. His close friend, former Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Ulemu Chilapondwa confirmed the death of his colleague.
Mr. Kamanya failed to retain his parliamentary seat in the just concluded elections.
Chilapondwa said that the exact reasons to Kamanya’s death were still not clear; though a suicide note left behind showed it had to do with politics.”The note indicated that his life was being threatened by two other politicians, but no names were mentioned.”
Talking to the local media, Thursday morning, Chilapondwa indicated that Mr Kamanya gave reasons for his committing suicide in his note, and also asked President Banda to look after his child.
“Mr. Kamanya attended a People's Party meeting on Wednesday, at around 3am on Thursday I received a telephone call from the deceased wife that he had shot himself. For now we are waiting for the police to tell us more as the investigations are ongoing” he said
Meanwhile, Malawi election officials were forced to resort to using fax and email to tally votes from this week's election after the electronic system broke down, delaying the release of the results, said Elections Chief Officer, Willie Kilonga, on Thursday.
The system "is refusing to take the information from the ground where our data clerks are stationed to send the results," he told AFP, two days after the vote. As a "back-up solution," officials in the southern African country's 28 districts were sending the results manually via fax and email to the national elections centre in Blantyre.
Over 70 per cent of President Joyce Banda’s Cabinet has lost parliamentary seats in a closely contented election pitting her against rival and predecessor’s brother Peter Mutharika, as indicated by provisional results as they await the official release by the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC), chaired by Maxon Mbendera.
The military was deployed to restore calm after irate voters set alight voting stations when election materials were unavailable and some bureaus opened 10 hours late.
The complications with vote counting system caused voting to spill into an unscheduled second day, Wednesday in 13 voting centers, as thousands queued to cast their ballot. Approximately 7.5 million people were eligible to vote in the fifth democratic elections held, since the end of dictatorship regime 20 years ago.
People of the Republic of Malawi on May 20, 2014 voted for the new set of leaders in the tripartite elections.