MALAWI: Women Candidates Hard Hit by Election Postponement

By Claire Ngozo
LILONGWE, Aug 26 (IPS) News that Malawi’s November local government
elections are to be postponed yet again has hit female candidates hard
– and mostly in their pockets. And it could mean that the country
will have less female candidates to vote for when they finally go to the
polls.

Many women candidates feel short-changed with the decision by the Malawi
Election Commission (MEC) to postpone the Nov. 23 elections. On Aug. 23
the MEC announced the elections will now be held on Apr. 20, 2011.

But women candidates, just like their male contenders, have already
started campaigning and spent money buying handouts for voters.
In Malawi election campaigns are expensive; most potential voters expect
candidates to give them handouts, such as T-Shirts, cloth, food items and
even money during campaign rallies and door-to-door campaigning.

The freebies are seen as a sign of ‘compassion’ and are an
unofficial requirement when contesting elections in Malawi. Some female
candidates have even invested their life savings into their campaigns and
many fear they will not have the funds to continue until 2011.

Jane Wandidya, a female candidate who had set her eyes on contesting the
local polls in Mkanda, Mulanje – a district in southern Malawi
– expressed her disappointment over the postponement of the
elections.
Wandidya, a livestock farmer, has been campaigning since April. She told
IPS that she has since sold 20 of her 28 goats and 54 of her 70 chickens
to raise money for her campaign – especially for buying freebies for
potentials voters.

"I have spent all the money I raised from selling the livestock. I am
running out of steam as well. I am not sure if indeed the elections will
be held on the new date. All the zeal I had has faded. I am not sure if I
will regain the energy to continue campaigning," she said.

But the postponement should come as no surprise as local polls in Malawi
have been continually postponed for a decade since 2000. Since the country
attained democracy in 1994, Malawi has conducted local government
elections only once in 2000.

Until it was changed in Dec. 2009, the country’s Constitution had
prescribed that under Section 147, the local polls would take place in the
third week of May in the year following the national general elections.
Ideally, the first local government elections were to be held in May 1995
a year after Malawi ushered in democracy. But this failed to happen until
2000.
The local elections also failed to take place in 2005 and the country has
had no elections since then.

Though in Dec. 2009, the country’s Parliament, amended Section 147
of the Constitution and gave President Bingu wa Mutharika the power of
deciding when the local elections will be held.

Beauty Kasonde, a 24-year-old woman from Mpanje village in the lakeshore
district of Salima, Central Malawi, has been campaigning for the position
of local councillor since April. She is also disappointed that the
election date has been moved forward.

She told IPS that she did not have enough money to satisfy voter’s
demands for freebies and has been dedicating time and energy in coming up
with alternative ways of campaigning which, she said, were becoming
effective as many people indicated interest in her.

"I do not have money to spend on buying materials for distribution. I
was going around in local gatherings such as funerals, weddings and even
initiation ceremonies to campaign. I was looking forward to contesting in
the November elections since I noticed that people wanted to elect me as
their local representative," she told IPS.

"It is so disappointing that after spending so much time and energy
the elections have been postponed. Time is money and I have spent it all
for nothing," worried Kasonde.

The MEC’s spokesman Richard Mveriwa told the local media that the
elections had to be postponed after the electoral body realised that it
would have challenges meeting the calendar of events for the elections.

Mveriwa disclosed that a new draft calendar indicates that the official
campaign for next year’s election will start on February 18 and end
on April 18, 2011.
"The electoral calendar is still being worked on and will be sent to
the president so that he sets the date," said Mveriwa.

But Jailos Chatela, a potential voter in Blantyre, Malawi’s
commercial capital, is unhappy with the postponement and not satisfied
with the conduct of the MEC. He says he does not believe the elections
will take place after all the postponements that have happened before.

"As local people, we continue to get denied a chance to choose
development projects that are needed in our local councils. There’s
is no local representation in the district and town assemblies and this
means our communities will still not get the local development we
desperately need," Chatela told IPS.