The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has submitted its final report on constituency and ward boundaries demarcation to the National Assembly.

Speaking to YONECO FM online, Director of Media and Public Relations at MEC Sangwani Mwafulirwa said the Legal Affairs and Business committees of Parliament assured MEC that the report will be tabled as Parliament meets this month.

According to Mwafulirwa, once the report is confirmed MEC will go ahead to demarcate the constituency and ward boundaries in readiness for the 2025 elections.

“Let me emphasize that once the report has been confirmed it does not mean that we will have by elections rather the new boundaries will be used for the 2025 elections,” Mwafulirwa said.

The review of constituency and ward boundaries exercise will see the number of constituencies rising from 193 to 229 whereas the wards shall be at 509 up from 462.

Reacting to the development, political analyst Victor Chipofya said he is okay with ward demarcations than constituency demarcations arguing that the current law makers are enough.

“For somebody to be able to contribute in terms of legislation it does not necessarily mean that they should represent a number of people in a particular constituency,” Chipofya said.

He said ward councilors are direct agents of development and not Members of Parliament (MP’s) and Ward Councilors are supposed to represent a small group of people rather than MP’s.

“It’s going to be more expensive for us as a country, already there’s so much money that we have been spending on the 193 MP’s that are there and now we are adding on, and the rationale does not really justify the action itself,” Chipofya said.

He nonetheless said, it is fair that MEC submitted this report to parley and all we can do is wait and see what parley will decide moving forward seeing that the country has three years to the next election.