Malawi votes in critical presidential election

Malawians returned to the polls on Tuesday for the second time in just over a year to vote for a new president after Peter Mutharika's re-election was voided over uncertainty regarding the election commission's actions related to ineptitude.

The rerun of the presidential election is seen as critical to the future of the country's political direction after the Constitutional Court in February ruled that the Malawi Electoral Commission's actions in the May 2019 vote demonstrated incompetence and greatly undermined the integrity of the elections.

By nullifying the results, which indicated that Mutharika had won narrowly, the court ordered new elections be held within 150 days of its February ruling. As a result, a new electoral commission was appointed on June 8.

The landmark verdict made Malawi the second country in Africa to have presidential poll results set aside, after Kenya's Supreme Court did the same in 2017.

The presidential election is mainly contended by Mutharika and Lazarus Chakwera, the leader of the Malawi Congress Party who lost the May 2019 election by 159,000 votes.

According to the electoral commission, it has provided hand-washing stations at each of the 5,000 polling stations to guard against the spread of coronavirus during voting. Malawi, which has 6.6 million registered voters, has so far recorded 749 infections and 11 deaths out of a total population of 18 million.