CC ruling means Renamo should win Quelimane – CIP Mozambique Elections

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CC ruling means Renamo should win Quelimane – CIP Mozambique Elections

3:20 CAT | 03 Nov 2023

FILE - For illustration purposes only. Renamo supporters' protest march in Quelimane on Thursday, November 2, 202 [File photo: DW]

Renamo has proven ballot box stuffing in Quelimane, the Constitutional Council (CC) ruled on Tuesday (31 October). This means the CC will accept this evidence when it considers the final results of the 11 October election which have been submitted by the National Elections Commission (CNE). The CNE said Frelimo won, but replacing the results of just 12 polling stations (mesas) would turn a Frelimo win by 3509 votes into a Renamo victory by 1675.

In its petition to the court, Renamo cited 39 polling stations with ballot box stuffing. However 12 of those are particularly obvious. Renamo submitted the district election commission (CDE) table of the results in all 180 polling stations. And 15 of these have a curious blank space for the number of votes (shown by the blue arrow):

Staeq.cip_

That probably happened when officials in STAE (Election Technical Secretariat) were rushing to change the Frelimo and Renamo votes, and did not have enough time to add them up, so left the spaces blank. Of those 15, Renamo has its copies of the official results sheets (editas) which are signed and stamped for 12. Editais are posted on the polling station door and copies are given to party delegates and observers; if they are signed and stamped, they have legal standing.

The changes made to the results when STAE was making its table are so huge that just 12 polling stations are enough to make a difference. In those dozen polling stations, 1514 votes were taken from Renamo and 3669 votes were added to Frelimo. In three of those polling stations, STAE gives Frelimo more than 600 votes and a turnout of nearly 100%.

If the Constitutional Council accepts Renamo’s signed and stamped 12 editais, which by law it should do, then Renamo would be declared victor.

For those 12, we have done a table of the differences between the polling station edital and the CDE chart.

Editalcquel.cip_

Others in Renamo’s 39 are equally gross. In two polling stations 300 votes were added, pushing turnout to near 100%. In an IFPELAC polling station 300 votes were just added to Frelimo while in a second polling station in EPC Unidade Popular 377 votes were added to Frelimo and Renamo lost 68, in order to keep the turnout just below 100%.

The STAE mapa de apuramento distrital – district totals by polling station – is treated as a secret document by STAE and the CNE, and thus has had to be leaked to us. The electoral law give observers access to all parts of the count. Law 14 of 2018 says that for municipal elections:

“1. Election observation covers all stages of the electoral process, from its start to the validation and proclamation of the election results by the Constitutional Council.

2. Observation of the electoral process focuses primarily on observing the following:

a) the activities of the National Electoral Commission, the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration and its support bodies at central, provincial, district and city level throughout the electoral process”.

But the CNE and STAE have always denied this. They say documents such as STAE’s mapa de apuramentodistrital are internal documents not covered by “all activities” of STAE as set out in the law.

And in the name of transparency, less and less information is public. Results are no longer released for each polling station, as they were until the 2014 election, and the internal tabulation process is not open.

Quelimane is unusual in another way. In all but three municipalities, the CNE simply accepted and published the district elections commission results sheets. But Quelimane was one of three where the CNE changed the results. This table shows the process.

Voetrsquel.cip_