Mozambique Elections: CNE confirms Sunday as day for repeat elections

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Mozambique Elections: CNE confirms Sunday as day for repeat elections

3:49 CAT | 06 Dec 2023

File photo: MMO

Mozambique’s National Elections Commission (CNE) begins monitoring the conditions for repeating the elections in four municipalities in the country this Wednesday (06-12).

“The National Elections Commission will carry out supervision, starting Wednesday,” the body’s spokesperson, Paulo Cuinica, told Lusa.

Cuinica said that “the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration is on the ground dealing with preparations” for the repetition of the ballot ordered by the Constitutional Council.

Last week, the Council of Ministers of Mozambique approved December 10 as the date for the repetition of local elections in parts of the four municipalities in which the process was not validated by the Constitutional Council.

A statement issued after the 41st ordinary session of the Council of Ministers indicates that the body approved the date proposed by the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE).

The process involves repeating the election at 18 polling stations in Nacala Porto, in Nampula province; three in Milange and 13 in Gurúè, in Zambézia; and in all 41 tables in Marromeu, in Sofala province.

Renamo opposes repetition

The Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, the largest opposition party) last week appealed for the suspension of the repeat of the election in those municipalities.

Current legislation establishes that, when the election of one or more polling stations is declared null, “the corresponding electoral acts are repeated by the second Sunday following the decision of the Constitutional Council”.

The Mozambican Constitutional Council (CC) on 24 November proclaimed the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) the winner of the 11 October municipal elections in 56 municipalities, against the previously 64 announced by the CNE, with Renamo winning in four municipalities, and ordered elections to be repeated in four other municipalities.

In the ruling, the CC decided “not to validate, due to the nullity of the election, all the voting carried out in the municipality of Marromeu”, Sofala province, and “not to validate the election and order the vote to be repeated” in two polling stations in Nacala Porto, a total of 12,893 voters; in three Milange voting assemblies, with a total of 2,397 voters; and in four voting assemblies in Gurúè, with 5,747 voters.

According to the unanimously approved ruling, read by the president of the Constitutional Council, Judge Counsellor Lúcia Ribeiro, Frelimo maintained its victory in the country’s two main cities, Maputo and Matola, where Renamo claimed to be the winner, despite around 60,000 votes being cut from the total allocated to the ruling party.

On October 26, Mozambique’s CNE, after carrying out the intermediate and general count, announced Frelimo the winner in 64 of the 65 municipalities that voted.

Source: Deutsche Welle