Malawi set for presidential poll re-run

Bloomberg

Lazarus Chakwera, a preacher who heads Malawi’s main opposition party, is seen as the front-runner heading into a court-ordered election rerun on June 23 after forming an alliance with popular vice president, Saulos Chilima.
The Supreme Court of Appeal, the top judicial authority, last month upheld the Constitutional Court’s annulment of
a shambolic May 2019 vote that handed President Peter Mutharika a second five-year term. It also ordered that the successful candidate must win an outright majority rather than the most votes as in the past — a change that should work in a united opposition’s favour.
Mutharika, a constitutional law expert who studied at the University of London and Yale, has ruled the landlocked southern African nation since 2014. While he’s been credited with bolstering economic growth, he’s been criticised for not clamping down on graft.
The government also shouldered some of the blame for the flawed vote — which included correction fluid being used to alter results — and failing to decisively tackle political violence that followed.
“This is a government whose image is tattered,” Ernest Thindwa, a political scientist at the University of Malawi, said by phone from the southern town of Zomba. “I don’t see how it can win this coming election.”
Securing a credible vote is a key test for a country the United Nations ranks as one of the world’s least developed after the ruling to scrap the previous result was hailed as a boost for democracy. It was only the second time a vote had been overturned in Africa.
The judiciary rejected a decision by the president last week to put the chief justice on leave pending retirement.
The nation of 18 million people relies on tourism, tea and a low-quality variety of the leaf, for the bulk of its export revenue.