Malawi wants to prevent voters' roll chaos

Malawi has trebled its budget for general elections in 2009, to avoid a repeat of a fiasco in 2004 elections in which voters' roll figures were inflated, electoral officials said Monday.

The southern African country will spend $50-million on the May poll, its fourth multi-party general elections since the end of dictatorial rule 15 years ago.

The funds will be partly used to set up a new roll of some six million eligible voters in the poor southern African country, said Fegus Lipenga, spokesman for the Malawi Electoral Commission.

"We will start all over again to register afresh people for the elections... We don't want a repeat of 2004 because a good voters roll is the basis for a credible election," Lipenga said.

He said the funds will partly be financed by the Malawi government and donors, who include Britain, the European Union and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The 2004 voters roll was thrown into controversy after the number of registered voters dropped by one million after the high court ordered an inspection of the lists.

An Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) observer mission to Malawi in 2004 found the voter registration process to be "deficient, resulting in inflated voter registration figures."

Deficiencies in a subsequent voters roll, such as omission of names and photographs, meant people had to be identified by three different reference documents which caused "confusion, delays and possible disenfranchisement of voters."

The elections in 2004, controversially won by Bingu wa Mutharika, cost about region of $14-million, bankrolled by the government and donors.