The National Electoral Commission (CNE) warned on Sunday 13 October that no political party or candidate for Mozambican President should declare themselves the winner of the general elections held on 9 October in Mozambique. The reaction came after statements made by Venâncio Mondlane, the presidential candidate of the extra-parliamentary Podemos party.
Mondlane claimed to have won the elections with a margin of 51 per cent of the vote. In this regard, Paulo Cuinica, spokesperson for the CNE, pointed out that the tabulation of the election results begins at the polling stations and that they will only be valid once they have been proclaimed by the Constitutional Council (CC).
According to Cuinica, the announcement of the official results follows several stages that must be strictly adhered to. ‘The first stage is the partial tabulation, which takes place during the count at the polling stations. This is done as soon as voting closes. The polling stations announce the result and hand out notices to those present, including journalists and observers,’ he explained.
The spokesman said that the Members of the Polling Station (MMV), the political party representatives and the candidate delegates are the first to have access to the notices and copies of some documents, and that they then send them to the district elections commission.
‘The district elections commission is the entity that will do the tabulation, i.e. the globalisation of the results from the various tables. At the end of the process, the results will be sent to the CNE, which has the task of centralising, tabulating and announcing the final results, which will then be validated by the CC,’ he clarified.
For this reason, Cuinica warned, ‘if someone comes along and announces that they are already President of the Republic, it cannot be the responsibility of the electoral bodies because the mechanisms established in the Republic of Mozambique are the ones we have just announced’.
Running in this election for the Presidency of the Republic are Lutero Simango, supported by the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM, the third largest parliamentary force), Daniel Chapo, with the support of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo, in power since 1975), Venâncio Mondlane, supported by the extra-parliamentary Podemos party, and Ossufo Momade, with the support of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, the largest opposition party).
Publication of the presidential election results by the National Electoral Commission, if there is no second round, takes up to 15 days, before being validated by the Constitutional Council, which has no deadlines for proclaiming the official results after analysing any appeals.
The vote included legislators (250 deputies), provincial assemblies and the respective provincial governors, in this case with 794 mandates to be distributed. The CNE approved lists of 35 political parties running for the Assembly of the Republic and 14 political parties and groups of voting citizens for the provincial assemblies.
