{"id":1003,"date":"2021-06-22T12:21:01","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T12:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/?p=1003"},"modified":"2021-06-22T12:17:46","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T12:17:46","slug":"chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/all-news\/chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama","title":{"rendered":"Chief Justice against elections \u2018courtroom drama\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\">Malawi<\/a>. <\/strong><\/span>Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda has urged newly appointed Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) commissioners to be serious when discharging their duties because election issues can build or break a nation.<\/p>\n<p>He said courts did not take pride in issues that result in \u201ccourtroom drama\u201d, saying what was needed was a strong minded, able and resilient commission.<\/p>\n<p>Nyirenda said this in Lilongwe during the swearing-in of three new Mec commissioners; Richard Chapweteka, Caroline Mfune and Emmanuel Fabiano. One of the new commissioners, Francis Kasaila, did not take oath because he was outside the country on official duties.<\/p>\n<p>He told the three commissioners that elections must express the will and the \u201cinner voice of our people\u201d. \u201cIt should never come to be, as it has been the case in the nearest past, that our elections eventually followed the trail of protracted court trials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is never in the pride of the courts, it is never something that we look forward to, that elections turn out to be a courtroom drama. It was never meant to be,\u201d Nyirenda said. Fabiano said they would abide by precepts of the law.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have the law that guides the Malawi Electoral Commission itself, which we have to observe and follow. There is enough guidance in terms of how we should conduct our business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The commissioners have been sworn-in after, on June 3 this year, High Court Judge Kenyatta Nyirenda nullified the appointment of four commissioners, citing irregularities in their appointment by former president Peter Mutharika.<\/p>\n<p>The four commissioners were Jean Mathanga, Linda Kunje, Steve Duwa and Arthur Nanthuru. This was after Malawi Congress Party (MCP) sued the presidency for appointing the four commissioners from DPP, indicating that the MCP nominee [Chapweteka] was omitted to accommodate DPP\u2019s four nominees.<\/p>\n<p>The judge indicated that the commission was supposed to have three commissioners from DPP and the other three from MCP. Out of the newly appointed commissioners, three are from DPP, meaning that the electoral body has three commissioners each from DPP and MCP.<\/p>\n<p>On February 3 last year, the Supreme Court upheld the High Court\u2019s decision to nullify results of the 2019 presidential election due to irregularities that marred the election process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Malawi. Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda has urged newly appointed Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) commissioners to be serious when discharging their duties because election issues can build or break a nation. He said courts did not take pride in issues that result in \u201ccourtroom drama\u201d, saying what was needed was a strong minded, able [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":1002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,12],"tags":[233,371,534,533,234],"class_list":["post-1003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-homepage-english","category-policy","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-malawi","tag-chief-justice","tag-elections","tag-malawi"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Chief Justice against elections \u2018courtroom drama\u2019 - Malawi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda has urged newly appointed Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) commissioners to be serious wh ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/all-news\/chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chief Justice against elections \u2018courtroom drama\u2019\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda has urged newly appointed Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) commissioners to be serious wh ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/all-news\/chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Malawi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-06-22T12:21:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/malawi\/sites\/36\/2021\/06\/img-60d1d4a99f107.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"780\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"405\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/all-news\/chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/all-news\/chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Chief Justice against elections \u2018courtroom drama\u2019\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-06-22T12:21:01+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/all-news\/chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama\"},\"wordCount\":373,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/all-news\/chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/malawi\/sites\/36\/2021\/06\/img-60d1d4a99f107.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Malawi\",\"chief justice\",\"elections\",\"Malawi\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"homepage-english\",\"policy\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/all-news\/chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/all-news\/chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/malawi\/all-news\/chief-justice-against-elections-courtroom-drama\",\"name\":\"Chief Justice against elections \u2018courtroom drama\u2019 - 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