Opposition candidate Peter Mutharika has been declared the winner of Malawi’s disputed presidential election.<\/p>\n
The leader of the Democratic Progressive Party obtained 36.4% of the vote, the electoral commission announced.<\/p>\n
A protester died earlier after police dispersed an angry crowd demanding a recount of last week’s ballot.<\/p>\n
Outgoing president Joyce Banda has alleged the vote was rigged.<\/p>\n
‘Law is clear’<\/p>\n
The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) had asked for a 30-day extension to declare the results so that a recount could be carried out.<\/p>\n
However, the High Court refused to delay the release of results and ordered the commission to make its announcement on Friday.<\/p>\n
“The law is clear, there is no extension,” judge Kenyatta Nyirenda said.<\/p>\n
Mr Mutharika is the brother of the late President Bingu wa Mutharika, and had served as his foreign minister.<\/p>\n
Former preacher Lazarus Chakwera came second with 27.8% of the vote. He represented the Malawi Congress Party, which governed from independence in 1964 until the first multi-party poll in 1994.<\/p>\n
Mrs Banda, who came to power after the death of Bingu wa Mutharika two years ago, was third with 20.2% of the vote.<\/p>\n
Her administration had been hit by a corruption scandal dubbed “cashgate”, which led donors to cut aid.<\/p>\n
Malawi is one the poorest nations in the world and is heavily dependent on aid, which provides 40% of the country’s budget.<\/p>\n
‘Frustrated voters’<\/strong><\/p>\n About 7.5 million people were eligible to vote in the elections, which was described as Malawi’s closest-fought poll in 20 years.<\/p>\n The election was chaotic, with many polling stations opening up hours late and frustrated voters setting one polling station alight.<\/p>\n The electoral commission said that in 58 of more than 4,000 polling centres the official number of votes cast was more than that of registered voters.<\/p>\n Last week, Mrs Banda accused a party, which she did not name, of infiltrating and hacking the electronic system that transmits the results to the MEC’s headquarters.<\/p>\n The MEC’s chairman denied that its system had been hacked.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Opposition candidate Peter Mutharika has been declared the winner of Malawi’s disputed presidential election. The leader of the Democratic Progressive Party obtained 36.4% of the vote, the electoral commission announced. A protester died earlier after police dispersed an angry crowd demanding a recount of last week’s ballot. Outgoing president Joyce Banda has alleged the vote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":21729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-21728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}