Violence, allegations of rigging ahead of poll

Tensions are high as Malawi's third multiparty general elections draw closer - the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) faces accusations of bias, while police have shot dead two opposition supporters protesting the death in detention of a comrade. Police in the southern district of Nsanje shot and killed the two opposition supporters on Monday for hurling stones at a police station, after an opposition sympathiser died in detention. "I confirm that two people were killed in the fracas," police spokesman Willie Mwaluka told Agence France Presse (AFP). He said the police had arrested a man for being drunk in public on Sunday, who committed suicide in detention on Monday by "apparently hanging himself, using pieces of his clothing". But an opposition official said the police arrested the man for chanting anti-government slogans and proclaiming that Gwanda Chakuamba, presidential candidate for the Mgwirizano, or Unity, Coalition, would be elected president in the poll on 18 May. "He was tortured by police until he died," Silas Kanjere, of the opposition Republican Party, told AFP. After hearing of his death, youths threw stones at the police station and looted houses, shops and a department store in the small town of Nsanje in southern Malawi, Mwaluka said. Kanjere told AFP that the youths attacked the police station to protest the death of their fellow opposition supporter and the police "opened fire using live bullets to disperse the crowd and killed our men". The MEC, meanwhile, has been accused of failing to enforce the Parliamentary and Presidential Elections Act, which empowers the organisation to ensure free and fair elections in the country. Civil society organisations and opposition parties accuse the electoral body of failing to discipline the two public media organisations, the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) and Television Malawi (TVM), for giving the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) party full coverage, while allegedly ignoring opposition parties. The commission was also accused of trying to rig the elections by creating bogus polling centres, to the advantage of the ruling party. At a National Electoral Consultative Forum (Necof) held yesterday in Blantyre, MEC chairperson Justice James Kalaile told the aggrieved parties to seek redress from the courts, the Ombudsman and the Human Rights Commission. Kalaile said accusations of the abuse of public resources by the UDF, unfair coverage by public media and many other electoral anomalies posed a challenge to his organisation. Boniface Tamani, chairman of the Public Affairs Committee (PAC), a grouping of religious organisations, questioned why the MEC was failing to take action against state media, as promised last month. However, the directors of both MBC and TVM said they did not have the resources to cover all the campaign meetings of the various parties. The opposition also accused the UDF of perpetrating violence, and alleged the police were not acting against its supporters. The UDF and police have denied the allegations. The European Union (EU) has deployed 22 election observers throughout the country. EU chief observer Marieke Sandeirs said the 22 observers would be joined shortly by another 42. The presence of EU observers, said Sandeirs, was to reduce tension, minimise instances of fraud and violence, and increase the confidence of contestants and voters to allow them to participate freely. Said Sandeirs: "On election day, they will observe the voting, counting and tabulation procedures. All their findings will be processed by the EU observer mission in Malawi, which will make a comprehensive analysis of the whole electoral process." With the elections less than a month away, it remains to be seen how the accusations against the MEC are handled. And what steps will be taken to calm rising tensions.