Bingu Wa Mutharika, candidate of Malawi's ruling party United Democratic Front (UDF) and its allies is leading in the country's presidential elections held Thursday, according to unofficial results announced late Friday by state radio Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC).

According to results from 11 districts, Mutharika took a totalof 231,357 votes, followed by John Tembo, candidate of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), with 215,036 votes. Gwanda Chakuamba, candidate of the seven-party opposition Mgwirizano Coalition and tipped to the biggest challenger to the UDF by most analysts and opinions, lags behind with 177,839 votes.

Brown Mpinganjira, candidate of the National Democracy Alliance, got 51,485 votes.

Justin Malewezi, independent candidate and former vice-president of Malawi ranked the last, with 28,937 votes.

Malawi has 28 districts in total. Out of the 11 districts whose results have been announced by the MBC, four are situated in the Northern Region, four lie in the Central Region, three in the Southern Region. They have a total of 1,462,054 voters on the unverified voters' roll.

Less than half of the registered voters reportedly eventually turned up at polling stations.

Counting of votes began immediately after polling closed at 6 p.m. Thursday and has since been going on.

The official results are expected to be announced by the Malawi Electoral Commission Saturday.

The Mgwirizano Coalition on Friday strongly accused the MBC of "cooking up" the results of the country's just concluded elections.

Civil societies that counting votes independently found Chakuamba got more votes in some district that the MBC said Mutharika was leading, the coalition said.

The third multipary elections in Malawi were originally scheduled for May 18, but postponed to May 20. Before the voting day, the ruling party had been under strong fire of opposition parties and international observers for using government resources, including state media, to woo the support of voters.

Source: Xinhua