Mozambique elections: Another court blunders, says Constitutional Council – AIM

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Mozambique elections: Another court blunders, says Constitutional Council – AIM

10:41 CAT | 05 Nov 2019

File photo: Bloomberg

The Constitutional Council, Mozambique’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law, has severely criticised the district court in the southern city of Matola for bungling an election appeal by the main opposition party, Renamo.

The court threw the appeal out on the grounds that it was submitted late. The general and provincial elections were held on 15 October, and parties had 48 hours – that is, until 17 October – to appeal against anything that happened at the polling stations.

The Renamo appeal reached the court on 19 October, and so the judge ruled that it could not be accepted because it was two days late.

But Renamo was not appealing against any polling station results: it was appealing against the tabulation of the results (known as the “intermediate count”) done by the Matola district elections commission, which took place on 18 October. So the Renamo appeal was well within the 48 hour deadline.

Hence the decision of the Matola court could not be accepted, said the Constitutional Council in a ruling dated 1 November, and the Renamo election agent had presented his protest in good time.

The court’s dispatch was null and void, the Council said, and so, under normal circumstances, the matter should return to the Matola court for “the restoration of legality and justice” by correcting the count done by the Matola District Elections Commission.

The Commission gave Renamo 34.51 per cent of the vote in the presidential election and 30.88 per cent in the election of the provincial assembly. But Renamo’s parallel count of the results sheets from all the Matola polling stations gave it 35 per cent in both elections.

Constitutional Council “refrains from acknowledging appeal made by Renamo”

But there is no time for the Matola court to reconsider the matter. “Considering that the electoral process is of a summary nature and obeys a strict calendar that is not compatible with the repetition of judgements”, the Constitutional Council ruled that it is judging the appeal itself “in order to maintain the rigour and credibility of the elections”.

The Council noted that, in its appeal to the district court, Renamo did not include evidence such as polling station result sheets. But when it appealed against the district court to the Constitutional Council, it did attach copies of results sheets.

This procedure was illegitimate, the Council said, because an appellant to the Council cannot add new evidence that was not submitted to the first court.

So the Council “refrains from acknowledging the appeal made by Renamo”, the ruling concluded.

This is exactly the same ruling that the Council made two days earlier when it considered the Renamo appeal against the results in Manhica district, Maputo province. The Council criticised elementary blunders made by the local court, but said it could not consider new evidence submitted by Renamo.

Renamo was asking for the number of votes it won in Matola to be corrected from 92,562 to 93,709. The Constitutional Council has the power to correct mathematical mistakes itself, if it so chooses.

Source: AIM