Civil Society Organisation under the banner of Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) have announced another round national-wide demonstrations slated for this coming Friday calling for resignation of Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chairperson Jane Ansah.  

Addressing a news conference in Lilongwe, HRDC Members, including Chairperson of HRDC Women Chapter Dorothy Ngoma said Tuesday`s planned protests have been called off and shifted to Friday this week.

HRDC Vice Chairperson Gift Trapence has confirmed in an interview with YFM that the CSOs will be holding another round of the peaceful demonstrations

“Malawians should be assured that we are not going to cancel, we are not going to postpone [the demonstrations] and this is the final message that we are giving them,” he said.

Trapence added that the HRDC will be holding the protests every Tuesdays and Fridays of the subsequent weeks if Ansah fails to resign.

“Once we start our demonstrations on this Friday, it means that the other week on Tuesday and also on Friday, meaning that every week on Tuesdays and Fridays will be having demonstrations, and these demonstrations will be in all the districts,” he said.

In addition HRDC has also expressed shock at the spate of deaths of MEC Presiding Officers and persons connected to what HRDC described it as alleged fraud-ridden election over the past several weeks.

“We cannot just watch our friends dying and at the same time being connected to the electoral process and that is why we are saying there are independent bodies such as Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) that are mandated to investigate such kind of mysteriously deaths so that is why as HRDC we are calling upon MHRC to investigate those cases,” Trapence said.

The CSOs have also questioned a tendency by MEC Officials who are categorically meeting presiding officers in the districts during night and conducting the exercise alone as a Commission without collaborating with other electoral institutions.