Lazarus Chakwera elected as New President of Malawi following Evidence of Irregularities in 2019 Elections

On 23^rd June 2020, the Presidential Elections of Malawi was conducted after the annulment of the results of the 2019 Presidential Elections by the Constitutional Court of Malawi earlier in the month of February 2020.

Lazarus Chakwera was elected as the new President of Malawi after winning 2,604,043 votes, which is 59.34 percent of the total valid votes. 2019 Presidential Election winner Peter Mutharika secured 39.92 percent of the total valid votes in the 2020 Presidential Elections.

This is the second incidence of Annulment of Election in the Africa Continent in the last 4 years, in August 2017 the Presidential Election of Kenya was annulled.

Background

The 2019 Presidential Election was conducted on 21^st May 2019 in which Peter Mutharika become the President of Malawi by securing the highest 38.57 percent of the total valid votes.

The election results were highly criticized by the opposition parties of Malawi and called the election as the Tipp-Ex election. Tip-Ex is a popular correction fluid. The opposition parties claimed that the correction fluid Tip-Ex was used for tampering the votes. Based on the allegations, the Constitutional Court of Malawi founded irregularities and evidence of vote tampering during the investigations.

This led to the annulment of the 2019 Presidential Election by the Constitutional Court on 3^rd February 2020.

Month: Current Affairs - June, 2020