By Wanangwa Tembo
National Initiative for Civic Education (Nice) Trust Civic Education Officer for Kasungu, Pilirani Chaguza, has challenged community citizen forums to start preparing for the September 2025 tripartite elections.
Speaking Tuesday during a day-long training for Municipality Citizen Forum on good governance and elections in Kasungu, Chaguza said the next year’s elections are another opportunity for the citizens to participate in governance and politics by choosing leaders of their choice.
“Citizen forums must help in preparing people for the coming elections through such activities like mobilising them to register for citizen identity cards and creating a hype for the people to be eager to register and vote.
“As community accountability and governance platforms, the forums must also contribute towards making the electoral processes peaceful. We want to see issue-based politics devoid of violence and hate because these are some of the issues that discourage people to participate,” He said.
Chaguza also appealed to women to deepen their political participation beyond mere voting by getting interested to vie for positions.
“The coming elections must accord us an opportunity as a country to increase the number of women in political positions. The women themselves must also show interest to contest in those positions and the rest of us must help in creating a favourable environment for them to do so,” he said.
In his remarks, chairperson for Kasungu Municipality Citizen Forum, Benson Willard, said there is need for more trainings for the volunteer structures so that they are well equipped for the electoral process.
He said: “We understand an election is a process with many crucial stages. As much as we thank NICE for organising this training, we need more of the same so that we understand the issues better and properly contribute towards the success of the coming polls.”
According to the Malawi Electoral Commission, voter registration for the next year’s polls will commence in September this year.