Top Malawi broadcasters halted Friday live dashboards of results from this week's general elections as the country waits for its next president after Tuesday’s vote.
The election authority was yet to release any official figures three days later. By law it has eight days since the vote to announce the results.
At least four television media, including public broadcaster MBC, abruptly pulled dashboards of results they collected from voting centres that had been running since counting started without explanation.
"This will create an information vacuum. Disinformation can fill that vacuum, and the public can be misinformed," said Golden Matonga, who chairs the Media Institute of Southern Africa's (MISA) Malawi chapter.
Rivals claim victory
President Lazarus Chakwera's Malawi Congress Party and the Democratic Progressive Party of his rival, 2014-2020 president Peter Mutharika, have claimed to have won the elections, which were also for parliament and local councils.
Votes started arriving Thursday at the national counting centre in the capital, Lilongwe, for verification of tallies between manual and electronic data.
In a statement, MISA Malawi urged all media houses to continue providing updates of results "without yielding to any pressure from authorities or individuals".
"We call on individual politicians and political parties to avoid any actions that attempt to erode public confidence in the media or undermine its responsibilities," it said.
