Banda, former foreign affairs minister, was picked by Mutharika as his running-mate for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). However, the campaign for 50-50 representation in Parliament has been dealt a heavy blow as 4 women MPs, including Banda, out of the 29 in the previous parliament have survived the elections.
Although the final list of winners for the Parliamentary elections has been released, there is a projection that although the number of women MPs has slightly increased, results will not be impressive against the aims of the 50-50 campaign.
Preliminary results indicate that of the 232 women who were contesting, the number of women parliamentarians that have made it is slightly over 40. They were contesting alongside 1, 281 men for 193 seats in the august House. The first woman presidential candidate, Loveness Gondwe of the National Rainbow Coalition lost the election and also lost her parliamentary seat to an independent candidate. Gondwe had picked Beatrice Mwale as running mate.
Emma Kaliya, coordinator NGO Gender Coordination Network expressed concern over this development.
“We had 29 women in the previous national assembly but out of this figure, only 4 have made it this year’s general elections. We are so disappointed that we could not retain the women in the House,” she said.
Kaliya however vowed not to stop campaigning for more women to take up decision making positions in various government departments and other non-governmental organisations. She said the women activists had already started lobbying President Mutharika to consider more women for cabinet posts.
After the death of two female MPs, the last Parliament remained with 27 women, representing 14 percent, although women make up the majority of the population at 52 percent.
Among those that survived the elections are Banda herself, former minister of Information and Civic Education Patricia Kaliati, former minister of women and child development Anna Kachikho and Jean Sendeza of the opposition Malawi Congress Party.
Other notable figures that have fallen include former first deputy speaker, Esther Nkhoma, Lilian Patel who was the chairperson for the Women Parliamentary Caucus and Callista Chimombo who is former minister of tourism.
Meanwhile, Mutharika was sworn in on Friday 22 May at a ceremony that took place at Kamuzu Stadium in Blantyre, in the southern part of Malawi. His new term ends in 2014.
Mutharika won the elections with over 2.7 million votes while his closest contender John Tembo of the Malawi Congress Party had about 1.2 million. Tembo entered into an electoral coalition with the former ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) whose leader is former president Bakili Muluzi.
Other presidential contestants included Stanley Masauli of the Republican Party (RP) Kamuzu Chibambo of People’s Transformation Party (PETRA) Dindi Gowa Nyasulu of the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) and James Nyondo, an independent candidate.
Rashweat Mukundu
Programme Specialist: Media Freedom Monitoring
MISA Regional Secretariat
21 Johann Albrecht Street
Private Bag 13386
Windhoek, Namibia
Tel: + 264 61 232 975
Fax:+264 61 248016
Mobile: 00 264 813 675 362
E mail rashweat@misa.org, misaalerts@gmail.com
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