Opponent Lazarus Chakwera was declared winner of the presidential election in Malawi by the election commission.
However, this does not mean the end of a long electoral battle, as even before the validation of these results, the defeated ruling party was denouncing irregularities.
One year after the disputed election of President Peter Mutharika, Malawians were called to the polls again last week in a replay of the 2019 presidential election.
In the 2019 presidential election, the party of the opponent Lazarus Chakwera took the matter to the Constitutional Court. The high court then invalidated the results on the grounds of “widespread and systematic irregularities” and ordered a new poll to be held on 24 June 2020.
The Malawian electoral commission on Saturday June 27 validated the results that had already been circulating for a few days. The opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera, defeated in 2019, is elected president of Malawi with nearly 60% of the votes. He was sworn in on Sunday 28 June.
“I do feel like Lazarus, I’ve come back from the dead,” Mr Chakwera said, referring to the biblical character of the same name. “I’m not a president of a faction, I’m a president of everyone in the country,” he added.
Saulos Chilima, Mr Chakwera’s running mate, was also sworn in as vice-president at a ceremony in the capital, Lilongwe
This is the second time a sub-Saharan African country has cancelled a presidential election. Kenya had already done so in 2017.