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While the formal procedures for voting were satisfactorily observed during Mozambique’s general and provincial elections of 15 October, in substantive terms key aspects were “grossly violated”, declares the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA), in its final report on the parallel vote count it undertook with its Mozambican partners.
EISA worked with five Mozambican civil society organisations in the Electoral Transparency Platform, which should have observed a representative sample of polling stations throughout the country. The platform intended to collect the results sheets (“editais”) for the presidential and parliamentary elections from 5,000 polling stations.
For the provincial assembly elections, it concentrated on the largest province, Nampula, and intended to collect the results sheets from 629 polling stations.
But it proved impossible to observe all these stations because of the illegal refusal by the provincial elections commissions in Zambezia, Tete, Gaza, Sofala and Nampula, to issue credentials for about 3,000 independent observers.
This had not happened in previous Mozambican elections observed by EISA and its partners. EISA remarks that the denial of credentials “seriously compromised the collection, analysis and more consistent assessment of the voting and the count”.
As a result, the Platform only obtained 2,507 results sheets from the presidential election (50.1 per cent of what had been expected), 2,224 from the parliamentary election (44.4 per cent) and 516 from the Nampula provincial election (83.3 per cent).
Of those stations observed, 94 per cent opened on time (at 07.00), and had all the material necessary for voting. In 95 per cent of cases, the polling station members of staff (MMVs) knew and observed the rules on the conduct of voting. Also in 95 per cent of the stations, there was no conflict worthy of note at the close of polls or during the count.
But in several provinces, MMVs and members of the defence and security forces prevented political party polling station monitors and independent observers from observing the voting and the count. This was the case with 33 per cent of the stations observed in Nampula, 16 per cent in Maputo province, 15 per cent in Gaza, 11 per cent in Tete, seven per cent in Zambezia, seven per cent in Sofala.
In a large number of polling stations the count did not begin on time. The law is clear – as soon as polls close (at 18.00, or whenever the last voter in the queue has voted), the count must begin. On the grounds that the MMVs wanted to rest, this instruction was ignored in 22 per cent of the stations observed in Zambezia, 15 per cent in Nampula, 12 per cent in Niassa, 10 per cent in Inhambane, nine per cent in Maputo City, and nine per cent in Tete. This delayed the start of the count by more than an hour.
The law also states that political party monitors must receive copies of the results sheets, and the results must also be posted on the walls of the polling station. This did not happen in 34 per cent of the stations observed in Nampula, 17 per cent in Inhambane, 12 per cent in Gaza, 10 per cent in Zambezia, nine per cent in both Sofala and Niassa, and six per cent in Cabo Delgado.
Even worse were the significant number of polling stations with an impossibly high turnout – where the number of people who supposedly cast ballots was higher than the number of voters registered at those stations – this was the case with 22 per cent of the stations observed in Tete, five per cent in Nampula, four per cent in Inhambane, and three per cent in both Gaza and Zambezia.
Such irregularities, EISA notes, undermined the integrity, credibility and transparency of the elections.
The parallel count undertaken by the Platform broadly agreed with the results announced by the National Elections Commission – namely that the incumbent president Filipe Nyusi and the ruling Frelimo Party won with more than two thirds of the votes cast.
In the stations in the sample, Nyusi had 604,077 votes (71.3 per cent), followed by Ossufo Momade, leader of the main opposition party, Renamo, with 195,378 votes (23.1 per cent), and Daviz Simango of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) with 41,587 votes (4.9 per cent).
In the parliamentary election, Frelimo won 500,572 votes in the sample stations (68.5 per cent), followed by Renamo with 177,901 (24.3 per cent), and the MDM with 34,415 (4.8 per cent). The turnout was about 48.5 per cent.
EISA recommended that the role of the Constitutional Council, the country’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law, should be revised, so that it is obliged to investigate situations that seriously compromise the integrity of elections, such as impossibly high turnouts at particular polling stations.
EISA also called for a thorough reform of the CNE, making it a professional body, and ending its politicisation by the parties. Political party appointees, it suggests, could still sit on the CNE, but only during electoral periods and “as mere observers, without the right to vote”.
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