Malawi’s voter registration exercise starts with hiccups

Malawi’s voter registration exercise for the May 2009 presidential and parliamentary polls got off to a slow start, and for some of those who attempted to register without proper identification documents, they were turned away to seek some of form ID like a passport, birth certificates, driver’s licence or simply a letter from their village headmen or workplaces.

Malawi, like most Anglophone states in Africa, does not have a systematic ID registration regime – something it has been contemplating for sometime now.

Malawians do not have identification a development which has made the exercise difficult to identify if they are real Malawians or not, and eligible to vote as the country\’s electoral laws stipulates.

According to reports, in some areas of the country the exercise has met a very low turn out of potential voters due to lack of sensitisation of registration before the actual exercise.

But Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) spokesperson Fergus Lipenga emphasised the need for people to get letters from their traditional authorities or employers in the absence of any official identity.

\"That’s a simple way of making themselves known to the officers at the centres if they do not have passports, driving licences or birth certificates,\" he said.

On civic education, he said the body accredited several organisations to conduct civic education countrywide and they did so in all corners of the country.