Malawi's moment of truth: The presidential election second time around

The Brenthurst Foundation and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung have jointly established a platform for public debate around Africa's political economy — to help to understand the political motives that lie behind development policy choices. The Governance Accountability Platform (or GAP) aims to allow the space for a more competitive testing of these choices. The GAP is thus open to providing a platform for ruling and opposition parties, along with Africa's civil society to improve accountability. The first in this regular series was focussed on the Malawi election. The result of Malawi's 2019 election was thrown out by its Constitutional Court following widespread abuses including the extensive use of correction fluid to alter numbers and the failure to audit two thirds of the results before the winner was announced. Malawi's Constitutional Court ruled that the election be redone. Will Malawi be able to stage a legitimate, free-and-fair election this time around? Or will Covid-19 be the blanket under which an election robbery takes place? What are the different offers that the government and opposition are presenting to Malawi's electorate?