The president of Mozambique’s Constitutional Council (CC), Lúcia Ribeiro, said on Thursday that the body will next week analyse “discrepancies” in the results announced for last month’s general elections, but that it will not be recounting votes.
It is necessary “to say that the CC is not recounting the votes,” stressed Ribeiro, during a meeting this morning with representatives of the main opposition party in the outgoing parliament, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), adding that this decision is justified by the fact that the National Electoral Commission (CNE) had itself said, in announcing the results of the general tabulation of voter returns, “discrepancies between the three elections, but that it hadn’t had time to check” these.
“So the CC, being a judicial body, can’t come and give that same answer,” said the president of the CC – the body responsible for validating and proclaiming the results of the 9 October polls, which included presidential, legislative and provincial elections.
“But there remains a curiosity and a responsibility and a duty to understand why there is a discrepancy and where these discrepancies exist,” she went on. “From where did this discrepancy begin to exist?
“But in this case, where there is a clamour about the figures, then it is the responsibility of the CC, which has to sign these maps, these figures,” Ribeiro said. “We thought it was up to us to find out what the problem was and where it is. We notified the CNE to explain to us why there had been discrepancies and that answer is in the file, which will then be evaluated next week when we sit down to assess the figures.”
She added that at the moment, more than two months after the elections, the CC is in the digitisation phase, with a team involving 57 people, including seven judges and technicians.
“We’re going to take our figures, compare them with the CNE’s figures, compare them with the centralisation notices, the district tabulation notices, which is to understand where there was the so-called stuffing” of ballot boxes. “And from there we can form our conviction and decide. That’s why the CC decided to take on the responsibility of checking.”
Ribeiro explained that Mozambique’s electoral process involves first validating and only then proclaiming the results, in accordance with legislation approved by parliament – unlike what happens in other countries, which proclaim the winners of the ballot with substantially shorter deadlines and only then decide on any disputes. In Mozambique, the CC is the final decision-making body.
Even so, she said that this process, which this time has been marred by demonstrations and stoppages contesting the results announced by the CNE, with more than 100 deaths already, shows that it is necessary to “rethink the electoral system in the future” to avoid such a situation.
“But this process shows that more than the legal framework, it’s true that the way, the system, the voting is also part of the legal framework, but instead of just thinking about the laws, we have to think about what kind of system we want, what kind of voting, what kind of tabulation we want,” she argued. “Are these four stations [tabulation at the table, district, provincial and central] before reaching the CC beneficial… Between these elections and the next ones, the next ones are in four years” time, local elections, we have three years to think.”
She acknowledged that with the current system “there’s a lot of paper that has to be looked at” and that it is necessary to “think about whether it’s possible to reduce it: “Reducing the amount of paper will probably also be accompanied by a reduction in many of these problems that are cyclically pointed out in our electoral processes.”
One of the demands that has been made by national and international observers and opposition political parties, who have denounced various electoral irregularities, is the public disclosure of all the minutes and notices from the 9 October vote, which Ribeiro said she does not think is feasible, because it involves 26,000 polling places and with three ballot papers for each voter.
“So, for now, to publish this would probably take us… about four to five months to put it on the internet,” she said of the results, concluding: “So, this is how we have organised ourselves to be able to respond to this clamour that there is regarding this electoral process, to seek the desired electoral truth and to see if we can also contribute to peace in our country.”
Although there are no concrete deadlines for the CC’s work, given the approaching end of the current legislature on 12 January, it in practice has until 23 December to proclaim the results of the general elections.
Lusa
