The Mozambican National Electoral Commission has eight days to send the Constitutional Council minutes and notices of the vote in Maputo and six provinces, in order to validate the results of the 9 October elections, which were contested by the opposition.
The demand from the Constitutional Council (CC), which has jurisdiction as an electoral court in Mozambique, is set out in an order and certificate dated Wednesday, to which the Lusa news agency had access.
In addition to the minutes and notices of the partial tabulation, carried out at the polling stations, and the same documentation made by the district commissions in Maputo city, the Constitutional Council wants to receive the same data for the provinces of Maputo, Gaza, Inhambane, Tete, Zambézia and Nampula.
Mozambique’s National Electoral Commission (CNE) announced last Thursday the victory of Daniel Chapo, supported by the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo, the party in power since 1975) in the election for country’s president on 9 October, with 70.67% of the vote.
Venâncio Mondlane, supported by the non-parliamentary Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), came second with 20.32%, but said he did not recognise these results, which have yet to be validated and proclaimed by the CC.
Frelimo also strengthened its parliamentary majority, from 184 to 195 MPs (out of 250), and elected all 10 of the country’s provincial governors.
In addition to Mondlane, the leader of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, currently the largest opposition party), Ossufo Momade, one of the four presidential candidates, said that he did not recognise the election results announced by the CNE and called for the vote to be annulled.
Last Thursday, presidential candidate Lutero Simango, supported by the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), also rejected the results, considering that they were “forged in the secretariat”, and promised “political and legal action” to restore the “will of the people”.
Venâncio Mondlane has repeatedly challenged the CNE to prove the results it announced, presenting the corresponding minutes and notices.
On the 24th, João Cravinho, who led the Electoral Observation Mission of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) to Mozambique, reiterated to Lusa that the publication of the electoral minutes “is the only way to have confidence in the results”.
For the former Portuguese minister of foreign affairs, “there is no reason why the election results should have taken as long as they did, although this is clear in the law”.
He therefore considered that “each polling station and parliament should have its results visible, so that they can be publicly aggregated at district, provincial and national level”.
“In the absence of this transparency, believing in the results is an act of faith,” he concluded.
On 11 October, Cravinho had already pointed out that the mission “found great disparities in the number of party delegates, with one party [Frelimo] typically represented by two delegates at practically every table, while other parties had a smaller presence”.
The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) also considered that the CNE’s announcement of the results “did not dispel concerns” about the “transparency” of the electoral process.
In the same position, the EU EOM reiterated its “appeal to the electoral authorities to ensure maximum transparency, including the publication of results broken down by polling station”, asking “the Constitutional Council to respond adequately to the contentious appeals presented by the different parties”.
Venâncio Mondlane initially called for a “general strike” to protest against the results announced by the CNE, but after the murder of Elvino Dias, his lawyer, and Paulo Guambe, head of the Podemos party, which supports him, he called on his supporters to take to the streets, which led to clashes between demonstrators and the police in various parts of the country, with deaths, injuries and arrests.
The Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), a Mozambican non-governmental organisation that monitors electoral processes, estimates that ten people died, dozens were injured and around 500 were arrested in the context of the protests and clashes during the strike and demonstrations on Thursday and Friday, which followed similar violent clashes on 21 October. Venâncio Mondlane called for further stoppages and protests for a week from Thursday, culminating in a national demonstration on 7 November in Maputo.
Lusa
