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Ramaphosa Congratulates Malawi’s New President Lazarus Chakwera

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CYRIL Ramaphosa, in his capacity as Chairperson of the Africa Union (AU), has offered his congratulations to Dr Lazarus Chakwera on his election as the President of the Republic of Malawi.


Ramaphosa has also congratulated all stakeholders for the success of this historic election which followed a Malawi Constitutional Court judgement on 03 January 2020 which called for new elections to be held.


The AU Chairperson concluded his congratulatory message by re-committing the Union to continued closer working ties with the Government of Malawi to enhance cooperation and pay particular attention to strengthening economic development and integration. 

Malawians returned to the polls on 23 June 2020. 

Chakwera garnered 2.6 million of the 4.4 million votes cast, representing about 59 percent, against Mutharika’s 1.7 million votes, or about 39 percent, Malawi’s Electoral Commission said late on Saturday.

It was the second time in 13 months that Malawians went to the polls to cast their ballot on Tuesday in a presidential election.

In February, the southeastern African country’s Constitutional Court threw out the results of the May 2019 election alleging widespread irregularities – a move only seen once in Africa before and never in Malawi.

The electoral commission initially declared President Peter Mutharika, who has been in power since 2014, winner of the discredited poll, claiming he garnered 38.5 percent of the votes. Chakwera, the Pentecostal pastor turned politician, won 35.4 percent of the votes cast, the electoral commission said.

The announcement led to months-long street protests with demonstrators claiming their votes were stolen.

(Compiled by Inside Politics staff)

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