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SPEECH MADE BY MESN CHAIRPERSON MR STEVE DUWA AT PARALLEL VOTE TABULATION STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT MEETING AT LILONGWE HOTEL ON 17 DECEMBER

2013 The Chairperson CONGOMA The Publicity Secretary for MESN Fellow Members of the Grand Coalition MESN National Coordinator and your Secretariat Staff Representative of NDI Members of the Press Ladies and Gentlemen

Good morning. I am very delighted, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, to welcome you all to this very important meeting between Malawi Electoral Support Network (MESN) and the CSOs under the Grand Coalition. The purpose for this meeting is for MESN, which is also a member of the Grand Coalition, to announce that we shall conduct Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) in next years elections. Parallel Vote Tabulation is an advanced and proven election monitoring methodology that allows nonpartisan citizen observers to systematically assess the quality of opening, voting, closing and counting processes. In countries where the process

goes well, PVT can accurately verify and validate the official election results. Ladies and Gentlemen, MESN is not a stranger in this PVT business. We conducted PVT in the 2009 elections. How accurate were the results projections by MESNs PVT in 2009 elections? The national estimates from the PVT closely matched the official results as announced by the MEC. All the estimates were of the same magnitude as the official results for the two largest vote winners (which represent over 96% of all votes) fall within the 95% confidence interval. This provided very strong evidence that the national tabulation process was conducted properly and that the official results reflected how citizens voted on Election Day. MESN PVT projected that DPP got 66.50% votes compared to the MEC official results of 65.98%. MESNs estimate for DPPs votes was extremely accurate and well within their margin of error (+/-1.8% confidence level 95%). For the 2014 elections MESN will deploy both long and short term observers across the country to observe various pre-election processes such as, political party primaries, nominations, official campaigns, polling, results handling and complaints handling by the courts and MEC. For the short term observation MESN will be using the Parallel Voter Tabulation (PVT) methodology. During the meeting today, MESN will orient you on what PVT is all about, why we need to conduct PVT in next years elections, where also PVT has worked successfully and what PVT cannot do among others. I wish you a fruitful meeting. Let us join hands to ensure that PVT is conducted for next years elections without hurdles.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you for your attention.

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