As the country heads towards the tripartite elections in 2025, the National Initiative for Civic Education (NICE) Public Trust has underscored the critical role of journalists in fostering transparency during the upcoming elections.
This was highlighted during a one-day training session on investigative journalism held in Lilongwe on Saturday.
In an interview after the training, Daniel Malango, Programs Officer for Lilongwe Rural and Dedza Districts, emphasized the importance of media engagement in their community-focused activities.
He said by involving journalists, NICE aims to enhance public awareness and ensure the dissemination of accurate information regarding their initiatives across various districts.
“Journalists are very important in our work because we do quite a lot in the communities. We thought of engaging the media today so that they are able to disseminate more information concerning the activities that we are doing in the district,” stated Malango.
Malango also highlighted the need for journalists in the country to report on irregularities in the upcoming elections, saying this will help the country to have a free and fair election.
“An election is supposed to be done in a transparent manner. To enhance that transparency, we want journalists to be part of the monitoring system of the election and also expose any irregularities. Because an election marred by irregularities is not an election,” he said.
Furthermore, the session highlighted the integral role of civic education in the electoral process.
“When we talk about civic education, we want people to fully understand what is happening in the country. We want to empower communities to take part in whatever is happening and to voice out on issues affecting them,” Malango remarked.
In his words, one of the country’s renown investigative journalists Watipaso Mzungu said time has now come for the journalists to take investigative journalism head on at the time the country is expected to to polls for the 2025 tripartite elections.
Mzungu emphasized that investigative work on how members of Parliament misuse Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and not living to their promises will help the politicians to live to their campaign promises.
The training was organized with support from European Union
