Malawi ruling party claims tampering in vote count

Malawi’s ruling party claimed on Friday that it had discovered irregularities in the vote count in nearly half the country’s districts after this week’s elections, while police announced the arrests of eight data clerks for allegedly tampering with results.

The 2019 presidential election was nullified because of widespread irregularities and officials in the largely poor southern African country want to avoid a similar scenario after Tuesday’s general elections.

Both President Lazarus Chakwera’s Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and its main rival, the Democratic Progressive Party of former president Peter Mutharika, claim to have won the presidential vote.

But observers said the indications were that Chakwera, 70, had lost his bid for a second term, with the economy in tatters and costs of l