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Topic Discussion II
Building Public Trust
Elections & Legislatures
Room 3
(13 of 23 pages)
Also, the quasality (sic) process helped to hold the electoral commission accountable
to the public and also to the political parties because every month we could hold those public meetings and discussions
where a process was being analyzed and suggestions put forward. The impact over this was that it came evident that
the commission was biased towards the ruling party and the stakeholders meeting demanded the removal of the chairman
and restructuring of the management of the electoral commission. That enhanced the level of the playing field and
also building public confidence in the electoral process.
On civil society, I would say that [inaudible] in funding the NGOs or local monitors, they also concentrate on
finding research within the NGO structure. In Malawi, the NGOs, apart from monitoring the election, they also have
the component of research, both in terms of legal and in distribution of the materials, and the reports were presented
to the National Quasilative Process and reviewed a lot of irregularities and system rigging process in favor of
government. These things were before the election date. It helped the stakeholders and commission to correct them
in order to level the playing field.
The international observers also came way before the registration was closed and they were in the country for 17
days. Their reports confirmed and gave credibility to the local monitors because what we found was almost the same
as what the local monitors found. The recommendation helped persuade governments to take measures in correcting
the situation on the ground before things got out of hand.
As of the actual election date, the local monitors, we conducted a vote tabulation which determines planned rigging
or human error in the tabulation or accounting of votes. We also added in beauty and confidence to the election
with that. The elections were closely contested in Malawi. The difference between the ruling party and the main
opposition was only three percent and as you can imagine in an environment where there are allegations of illegalities,
the competition was very stiff. Since we had conducted an independent voter tabulation, our results were out way
before the electoral commission results were announced. When the opposition were complaining about the results
of the elections, we produced our results which were not far from the commission. That built confidence and persuades
opposition to accept the results, despite the irregularities, which were highlighted, but in actual voting, in
the voice of the people to demonstrate their will, was reflected in the results.
Quickly on the legislature, efforts were underway in the previous Parliament in Malawi to enforce public hearings
within the policy making and registrative process, despite that the government or the ruling party was not use
to these measures. Possibly, education and training mostly is concentrated on managers and ranks in the government,
without understanding totally the issues. My experience in dealing with Parliament is that most of the fundamental
questions that would enhance public confidence in our assemblies are not really understood by those who have key
positions either in government or in opposition. So persuading them to introduce measures that would enhance public
confidence and public participation in policy making, become very difficult.
Finally, I would say that it is also important that the independent policy institutions which are involved in the
analyzing policy and evaluating processes, mostly in budget development, be very important to be linked to committees
of Parliament. My institute works with the finance and budget committee of parliament and we feel that a lot of
irregularities which are incompatible with the government priority policy. My government [inaudible] but we find
the allocation or resources do not reflect that government policy. We help them to show how the government [inaudible]
with distribution and allocation of resources. Also to review that the actual votes that are put into the budget
and the financial distribution, the uses of those resources, after the financial year is over, you see there are
a lot of movements of resources within the budgeting period. When these are publicly debated, it pushes government
to respond to public opinion and demands.
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