MALAWI: New UTM President & more – 19th Nov 2024

Muli bwanji from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Malawi Update from the 19th of November twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Malawi.

There’s a new candidate for the twenty twenty-five Malawi Presidential elections, as the United Transformation Movement (or UTM) elected a new president during a convention in Mzuzu city in the north over the weekend.

Dalitso Kabambe, the new UTM President and former Reserve Bank Governor, won by a huge landslide with 636 votes, while neither of his competitors managed to get thirty votes.

His win has attracted many think pieces in local news and on social media, with many echoing that Kabambe is arguably the best presidential candidate. Other notable candidates include President Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party and former president Peter Mutharika of the Democratic Progressive Party.

Speaking of the elections, some opposition parties, namely the UTM, the Democratic Progressive Party, the United Democratic Front and the Alliance for Democracy, held demonstrations against the Malawi Electoral Commission (or MEC) on Wednesday the 13th in Lilongwe.

The parties have been forcing Annabel Mtalimanja, the MEC Chairperson, and Andrew Mpesi, the Chief Elections Officer at MEC, to step down from their positions because they are allegedly affiliated with the ruling party and can therefore not be trusted to hold fair elections next year.

The demonstrations got so bad that businesses in Lilongwe’s Old Town came to a standstill. Some men dressed in black masks, who could have been supporters of the ruling party, threatened the demonstrators with panga knives.

Authorities at MEC seem not to be phased by the demonstrations at all as they did not comment on them. On Tuesday the 12th, they released nomination fees for the twenty twenty-five elections. The fees apply to candidates nominated for the positions of President, Member of Parliament, and Councillor.

According to their statement, the Commission gave special treatment to women, people with disabilities, and youths when they were formulating their fees to encourage them to contest political positions.

The Commission has pegged presidential nomination fees at ten million Kwacha, which is five thousand seven hundred dollars. Men contesting for parliamentary positions will pay 2.5 million Kwacha, one thousand five hundred dollars, while women, people with disabilities and youths aged under thirty-five will pay a little over 1.2 million Kwacha, 570 dollars.

Meanwhile, tensions are still running high as locals are curious about what caused the plane crash that killed Saulos Chilima, the Vice President, and eight others in June.

On Saturday the 16th, the Commission of Inquiry on the accident told local media that they had completed the first and second phases of their exercise, which they conducted in the Northern and Eastern regions.

Justice Jabbar Alide, the Chairperson of the Commission, said they spoke to members of the general public and officials from various public and private institutions, as they believe the crash may have been witnessed by locals but were afraid to come forward due to safety reasons. These testimonies might help the investigation and see if there was any foul play involved, since most locals believe that Chilima was killed by the current government as he was a strong presidential candidate.

It is Parliament Week in Malawi. Catherine Gotani Hara, the Speaker of the National Assembly, said Parliament Week seeks to enhance public awareness of the functions and operations of the Malawi Parliament. It will run from Monday the 18th to Friday the 22nd under the theme Know Your Parliament.

It had an exciting start as tons of locals participated in a colorful parade which started from the Area 18 Interchange to the Parliament Building in Lilongwe in the Central Region, where educational pavilions were set up. Locals participating in the parade carried awareness placards and the Malawi Defense Force Brass Band played some songs.

Some participants included Rebecca Ada-Dontoh, the United Nations Resident Coordinator, and students from the Lilongwe Demonstration Primary School.

Local news said there is a thirty percent rise in teenage pregnancies in Ntcheu district in the Central Region and Neno district in the Southern Region.

In an interview on Monday the 18th, the Family Planning Association of Malawi said the teen pregnancies are a result of misinformation on family planning methods. They have since emphasized the need for teenagers to have access to proper family planning services.

In other news, Lilongwe is about to have a new road, as the Roads Authority confirmed that their dual carriageway will be completed by the 30th of December. The project includes lane expansions, new bridges, and an interchange.

On Friday the 15th, Emmanuel Champiti, the CEO of the Authority, was very excited about the progress, especially because traffic in the city has been reduced.

Some of the roads undergoing construction include the M1 road from the Crossroads to Kanengo, Mzimba street, Kenyatta Road and Sharrar Street.

The Electricity Supply Corporation (or ESCOM) reminded people to update their prepaid electricity meters if they haven’t already. This message is especially going out to ESCOM customers whose electricity meter numbers start with the following numbers:

3711

3712

And: 37132

They have given locals until Sunday the 24th to update their meters.

ESCOM has been implementing a project to upgrade all prepaid electricity meters, so that they are compliant with the new international requirements for transferring electricity pre-payment tokens.

They urged customers who haven’t upgraded their meters to buy two months’ worth of electricity tokens, so that they are still able to have electricity once the meters become useless after the deadline.

For more details check out ESCOM’s statements with the link in our show notes.

On a related note, the country experienced a nationwide blackout following some maintenance works by ESCOM, which prompted them to implement load-shedding.

In their initial statement, ESCOM said the load shedding would last from 4:30 AM to 5:30 PM on Sunday the 17th, but it went on until after the stated time. They released another statement on Sunday notifying its customers that they had encountered some issues during their work, and would restore power by 9 PM the same day.

They kept their word, and power was restored.

Speaking of maintenance, the First Discount House (or FDH) Bank announced their system maintenance works on Friday the 15th.

They said that during the maintenance, which was carried out on Sunday the 17th, its customers would not be able to access many of the FDH platforms, including their ATMs, POS machines, or online banking services.

Facebook comments on FDH’s post showed that people were very angry probably because the last time FDH had a system upgrade, their system was down for nearly two weeks, leaving their customers unable to do any transactions online or physically.

In some sports news, football enthusiasts had a great start to the week after the Flames, the Malawi national football team, scored three goals-to-nil against Burkina Faso in the Confederation of African Football TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations twenty twenty-five qualifiers. The match was played at the Bingu National Stadium in Lilongwe on Monday the 18th.

This is the Flames’ first win after losing all ten of the games they played in the qualifiers. However, the victoryt has not done much for the Flames’ group standings since the other teams in the group, namely Senegal, Burkina Faso and Morocco, all did well in their other games and are top of the table.

The Netball Association of Malawi has hired new coaches for the Queens, the national netball team.

The contracts for Joanna Kachilika, the Queens’ Coach, and Ellenour Mapulanga, the Assistant Coach, expired. According to a statement by the Association, the Queens will now be led by their former coaches, Peace Chawinga-Kalua and Mary Waya. They have been reappointed and will work as Co-Head Coaches starting from Tuesday the 19th.

Meanwhile, Kachilika was transferred to coach the under-twenty-one team.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Before we leave, did you know that if you are listening to us on Spotify you can leave comments or questions in the episode? There's a comment box right there. The comments are private by default, and we won’t publish them. If you want us to get back to you, share your email so we can contact you back! We'd love to hear from you! Put something in there, go crazy.

Pitani bwino!