Mozambique, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe endorse Amendment to the LIMCOM Agreement
As predicted, the acquiesce of the Constitutional Council (CC) and National Elections Commission (CNE) to fraud in five municipalities on 10 October has already been seen as a licence to cheat by senior people in Frelimo. Jaime Neto, recently named Frelimo first secretary in Sofala, gave a statement Friday celebrating the victory in Marromeu, praising his party workers, and making no mention of any misconduct. To be elected a provincial secretary requires the approval of the head of the party, President Filipe Nyusi. Therefore his statement this morning will be seen approval from the top for what happened in Marromeu.
Thursday night and in six municipalities on 10 October Frelimo majorities in the district elections commissions excluded opposition commission members and fabricated totally new results. In some cases ballots were removed with the assistance of the police, who proved in be highly partisan in several cities. This is fraud at a higher level than before. Previously fraud was mainly at the polling stations – ballot box stuffing and invalidating opposition votes. This year, it is at the district elections commission level.
Marromeu and Gurue in 2013 proved to be the testing grounds. Frelimo stole the elections in Marromeu in 2013 and was not challenged, but the Constitutional Council (CC) reversed the involvement of the district and provincial elections commissions in Gurue in 2013 where the CC forced a rerun of the election. That set a boundary line of what level of fraud was permitted in 2014.
This year, fraud at the level of Gurue in 2013 was permitted. The CC, which has a broad mandate and investigated Gurue in detail in 2013, this year chose not to intervene in blatant frauds, where even the CNE’s own provisional counts showed that district elections commissions were faking the results.
The CC even ruled that opposition parties cannot protest. Bizarrely, the CC ruled that if a party is illegally excluded from the district and city count, it must protest at that meeting that it was not permitted to attend – clearly an impossibility. And Jaime Neto and other senior Frelimo figures have taken their guidance from this.
Are they right to believe that district and provincial level fraud is now permitted, and the presidential election next year can be won simply by fabricating results sheets at polling station and district level?
Free, fair and transparent elections next year depend on the response of the CC and CNE now, and more importantly on whether or not Mozambican civil society and the international community choose to respond. Frelimo is betting that civil society will remain passive. And it is betting that the international community is less interested now in governance, secret debt and elections, and only interested in gas and mineral investments by its companies – and thus will continue to work with a re-elected Filipe Nyusi and Frelimo.
Is Frelimo right in its assumptions?
By Joseph Hanlon and Borges Nhamirre
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