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Printing of presidential ballot papers started on Tuesday this week by a UK security printing company, the Electoral Commission said on Thursday.
Commission spokesman Fegus Lipenga said in an interview two Commissioners, Marko Kanjo and Kafwe Tembo, who represent UDF and Aford, respectively, on the Commission left for the UK on Wednesday to supervise the printing.
He said the two are being accompanied by the Commission’s head of Electoral Services Harris Potani and Elections Coordinator Roosevelt Gondwe. They are expected back next week.
Lipenga said printing of parliamentary ballot papers will start next week and another team from the Commission will leave for the UK to supervise the job.
He said they have decided to print the ballot papers early so that they have should enough time of correcting any mistakes that may come up.
“We don’t want to have a situation like we had during the last election where parliamentary ballot papers for Mwanza were printed locally because of mistakes,” he said.
According to the Electoral calendar, printing of ballot papers was expected to commence on March 10 and the Commission is expected to receive the ballot papers and polling materials from UK between April 26 and 30.
The electoral calendar indicates that the Commission is expected to deliver election materials to assemblies and polling centres between May 3 and 8.
Asked what security measures the Commission has put in place considering that there is no guarantee of security even at police stations where salaries have been stolen in the past, Lipenga said the Commission will intensify security.
“We are going to use Malawi Army trucks to distribute the materials in all the centres and who would want to tamper with an Army truck? We have increased our security in all the centres,” said Lipenga.
He said ballot papers will be distributed three to four days before polling.
Commenting on other activities on the EC calendar, Lipenga said the National Elections Consultative Forum (Necof) meeting, which according to the calendar, was supposed to be held on February 13, will be held on March 29 at Capital Hotel in Lilongwe.
He said the Commission is expected to brief all contesting political parties of their expected conduct during the official campaign period which starts on March 20.
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