Mozambique Elections: Observers refuse to send Constitutional Council election notices

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Mozambique Elections: Observers refuse to send Constitutional Council election notices

3:51 CAT | 09 Dec 2024

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Folha de Maputo]

The Mozambican electoral consortium Mais Integridade today refused to send the minutes and notices (actas and editais) of the general elections in its possession to the Constitutional Council, after a request from that body on Wednesday, so as not to be a source of “distortion of the truth”.

“As part of the process of validating the electoral results of the general, presidential, legislative and provincial assembly elections held on October 9, 2024 (…) this body requests that your institution (…) be kind enough to send the minutes and notices of the polls in your possession,” reads a dispatch from the Constitutional Council, released to the media today.

In the dispatch, issued on Wednesday, the CC gave a five-day deadline for the delivery of the documents, which ends today.

The electoral observers, however, are refusing to send the documents, considering that those in their possession cannot contribute to guaranteeing electoral truth, as they are allegedly falsified notices that do not reflect the results seen at the time of the vote count.

The platform, made up of Mozambican civil society organizations, also stated that the “sufficiently high levels of irregularities” made it impossible to determine the real result of the election in the provinces of Zambézia and Nampula, where it had access to and processed the notices.

“The Mais Integridade consortium does not intend to be a source of distortion of electoral truth. It also understands that in the context of lack of trust and lack of integrity in institutions, the late request for information could be used to legitimize the validation of electoral fraud in the elections,” states a document from the consortium responding to the request, sent to the CC today.

Mais Integridade also says that it received the CC’s request with “enormous surprise”, since that body allegedly refused to receive the same documents after the local elections of October 11, 2023.

According to Mais Integridade, the documents sent in 2023 to the CC presented “clear evidence” that contrasted with the results announced by the National Electoral Commission (CNE), demonstrating “signs of substantial fraud in the aforementioned elections”.

“The electoral consortium Mais Integridade congratulates the Constitutional Council for now considering it a relevant source for the process of validating the elections, despite not forgetting that a year ago the same entity ignored the notices it [Mais Integridade] voluntarily sent,” reads the response from the observers, who expressed their willingness to provide clarifications on the irregularities they found during the 2024 vote.

The announcement by the CNE on October 24, of the results of the October 9 elections, in which it attributed victory to Frelimo candidate Daniel Chapo with 70.67% of the votes, sparked popular protests, called by the also presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, which have degenerated into violent clashes with the police.

According to the CNE, Mondlane came in second place, with 20.32%, but he does not recognize the results, which still have to be validated and proclaimed by the Constitutional Council.

The successive stoppages and demonstrations that have taken place in Mozambique since October 21 have caused at least 103 deaths, according to an update made today by the electoral monitoring platform Decide.

Source: Lusa