LETTER FROM MALAWI

Govati looked uncomfortable. He put down his fork. “I have to go,” he smiled. “Listen, I can hear car horns, and cheering. I need to capture those images. See you later.”

And slinging his camera back over his shoulder he was gone.

Govati Nyirenda is the chief photographer for the Malawi News Agency, and one of my oldest friends.

He has been documenting his country’s progress since the dawn of multi-party democracy in the early 1990s.

This week something special happened, so momentous it made the pages of the Washington Post and the Financial Times.

On Monday, Malawi’s Constitutional

Scotland and Malawi share a unique bond stretching back 160 years to Dr David Livingstone. Scotsman columnist Susan Dalgety has moved to Malawi for six months where she will write a book about the small African nation. The Spirit of Malawi will be published next year, 15 years after Scotland and Malawi signed a co-operation agreement. In her column she will share stories about daily life in Malawi as well those of the many Scots who are today making a positive impact in the country dubbed the Warm Heart of Africa.

Court declared that the 2019 Presidential elections were null and void because of irregularities in the ballot, including the liberal use of Tipp-ex to alter many of vote tally sheets.

Five High Court judges, who had been considering evidence for many months, also heavily criticised the Malawi Electoral Commission for its failure to oversee the election properly.

In a decision that stunned the country, they announced that there must be a new election for the head of state within 150 days.

Further, the country should revert to the 2014 presidential team – Mutharika and former Vice President Saulos Chilima, now leader of a new opposition party, until then.

And they instructed parliament to follow Malawi’s constitution and amend the Parliamentary and Presidential Elections Act to require future winners to achieve an absolute majority of 50 percent plus one votes.

The incumbent President, 79-year-old Peter Mutharika, had won only 38 per cent of the vote in May last year, and his authority had not been accepted by the majority of Malawians.

“He’s not our president,” people said, as they took to the streets in the months following the May poll to protest what they regarded as an illegal result. And on Monday, they were proved right.

Of course, Mutharika has threatened to appeal the judgement, but as one of Malawi’s leading political scientists, Boniface Dulani, wrote in the Washington Post, “as the High Court’s ruling was unanimous, such an appeal would be unlikely to end favourably for Mutharika…”

Malawi is only the third African country to nullify a presidential