Malawi’s former President Peter Mutharika has taken a comfortable lead in the country’s presidential race, with two-thirds of districts having reported provisional results.<\/p>\n
The 85-year old has received around 66% of the valid votes counted so far, with his closest rival, the incumbent Lazarus Chakwera, 70, trailing on around 24%.<\/p>\n
Results declared so far indicate that Mutharika has won in areas known to be Chakwera strongholds, including the capital, Lilongwe, and Nkhotakota.<\/p>\n
But Chakwera’s camp remains hopeful that once results are declared from other areas, his vote will increase, forcing a run-off.<\/p>\n
A candidate needs more than 50% of the vote to be declared the winner of last week’s election.<\/p>\n
The Malawi Electoral Commission has until the end of Wednesday to announce the final result.<\/p>\n
At least two of the 12 districts still to declare results have a large number of registered voters, and Chakwera’s camp believes he will do well there. These includes rural areas around Lilongwe and Dedza.<\/p>\n
Two other districts, where Mutharika is expected to do well, have had their results withheld by the electoral commission as it checks whether they are accurate.<\/p>\n
The commission said it was committed to transparency, accuracy and credibility.<\/p>\n
It added that it was carefully checking every tally sheet, after the constitutional court annulled Mutharika’s victory in 2019 because of irregularities.<\/p>\n
Chakwera won the re-run by a wide margin, but during his presidency Malawi’s economic crisis has deepened, with high inflation, food and fuel shortages and constant power cuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi’s former President Peter Mutharika has taken a comfortable lead in the country’s presidential race, with two-thirds of districts having reported provisional results. The 85-year old has received around 66% of the valid votes counted so far, with his closest rival, the incumbent Lazarus Chakwera, 70, trailing on around 24%. Results declared so far indicate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"BBC","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,30],"tags":[4417,4013,274,4445,4446,2921],"class_list":["post-17925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-lazarus-mccarthy-chakwera","tag-lilongwe","tag-malawi","tag-malawi-electoral-commission","tag-nkhotakota","tag-peter-mutharika"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}