Mozambique Elections: MDM in Beira submits appeal to claim votes allegedly diverted in favour of Frelimo

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Mozambique Elections: MDM in Beira submits appeal to claim votes allegedly diverted in favour of Frelimo

3:12 CAT | 25 Oct 2023

Image: AIM

The Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), the third-largest party in the country’s parliament, yesterday demanded, via an appeal submitted to the Constitutional Council, the restoration of “electoral truth”, accusing the Beira District Elections Commission of having diverted votes in favour of the party in power.

“We do not agree with the results announced here. We did our counting, and we had around 68% of votes, contrary to what we heard,” MDM official Domingos de Albuquerque said. Notwithstanding, the party has already been declared the winner of the ballot in Beira city, in central Mozambique.

Addressing a press conference in the city of Beira, Albuquerque said that his party won the elections in Beira by a large margin, and demanded that “justice be restored” to the residents of the municipality.

“The MDM should have around 33 members in the Municipal Assembly, but the District Elections Commission did everything [it could] to reduce the number of MDM members in the assembly. We are talking about the loss of at least five seats, which is a lot,” he declared.

The MDM had already raised the matter with the Beira District Elections Commission and the Judicial Court, but did not find the response satisfactory, deciding therefore to appeal to the Constitutional Council yesterday.

“Nine percent of the votes were taken from the MDM, and this is what made us appeal to the Constitutional Council, hoping to see legality restored. The CED in the city of Beira attributed 24,000 votes to Frelimo [Mozambique Liberation Front]. We don’t know where they came from, and suspect that there were phantom votes in favour of Frelimo,” he said.

According to the notice of the intermediate district count presented in Beira by District Elections Commission president Otávio Paulo, the MDM, the second largest opposition party in the country, was re-elected to the leadership of that municipality with 112,963 votes (58.16%), followed by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), with 73,302 votes (37.74%), and the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), with 7,045 votes (3.63%).

The announced result gives the MDM 28 members in the Municipal Assembly of the second most important city, politically, in Mozambique. Frelimo has 18 and the National Electoral Resistance (Renamo), the main opposition party, only two.

The sixth municipal elections in Mozambique took place in 65 municipalities across the country on October 11, including 12 new municipalities, which voted for the first time.

According to intermediate district and provincial results for the 65 municipalities released by electoral bodies in recent days, Frelimo won in 64 and MDM in one – Beira.

At least five district courts have already recognized irregularities in the elections and ordered the repetition of several electoral acts, in some cases with the electoral bodies and the party in power submitting appeals to the Constitutional Council (CC) in challenge to the sentences, rulings and orders of the district courts.

The CC, which is exclusively responsible for validating elections in Mozambique, began yesterday to decide on the process, having already quashed the decision to annul the elections in Chokwé, which had been taken by a district court.

The Mais Integridade consortium, a coalition of Mozambican non-governmental organisations that observed the process, accused Frelimo, the party in power, of having manipulated the results of the local elections, carrying out “a high level of fraud”.

Source: Lusa