Mozambique Elections: PGR says ‘investigating complaint’ on fraud, warns of ‘overlaps’

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Mozambique Elections: PGR says ‘investigating complaint’ on fraud, warns of ‘overlaps’

6:00 CAT | 06 Nov 2024

File photo: O País

The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) of Mozambique is investigating a complaint lodged by the Podemos party, which supports the candidacy of Venâncio Mondlane, denouncing the alleged “fraudulent fabrication” of election minutes and notices (actas and editais).

The position appears in a response from the PGR to the complaint from Podemos, dated November 5 and to which Lusa had access today, in which it is stated that the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) “is the holder of the criminal action, under the terms of the Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique and the law, and is therefore the competent entity to initiate criminal proceedings”.

“This power is exercised by the Public Prosecutor’s Office bodies according to the subject matter and territory, in this case the Public Prosecutor’s Offices of the district and city where the events occurred, and therefore the complaints should have been filed with those bodies. Although the complaint filed does not contain all the elements required by law, the Public Prosecutor’s Office will follow up on the matter in accordance with the law,” it reads.

In the complaint filed on Monday (04.11) with the PGR and with the Constitutional Council (CC) by the Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), signed by its national election agent (mandatário), Filipe Acácio Mabamo, it is stated that Podemos “has information related to the fraudulent production of new minutes and notices by the district election commissions”.

It adds that “many representatives of political groups’ candidates” have been “contacted by those responsible for the district election commissions to sign false documents” and that their contents “contradict the documents signed by the representatives of candidates at the polling stations” on October 9.

According to the Podemos complaint, there is evidence of “the practice of crimes of forgery, use of false documents, criminal association and corruption for illegal acts”, which is why it is asking for the PGR’s intervention to “request the minutes and notices delivered by the district election commissions to the National Election Commission [CNE] and compare them with those in the possession of other political groups”, in addition to asking to “identify all offenders” and “to proceed with their preventive arrest, with a view to preventing the continuation of the criminal activity”.

However, the response from the Attorney General regarding the request for minutes and notices delivered by the district election commissions to the CNE states that this “is being carried out by the Constitutional Council, the competent body in matters of electoral contentious appeal”.

“This is a matter under consideration by a judicial body, in terms of which the overlap of this diligence may interfere with that process, since the documents necessary to assess the forgery are the same, in addition to the fact that the contentious appeal is of an urgent nature, with a very short deadline,” it reads.

“It follows from the law that in the context of an contentious electoral appeal, if there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing, that body has a legal obligation to extract copies and forward them to the Public Prosecutor’s Office for the due procedures,” the response concludes.

The announcement by the CNE of Mozambique on October 24, in which it attributed the victory to Daniel Chapo, supported by the Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo, the party in power since 1975) in the election for President of the Republic on October 9, with 70.67% of the votes, sparked popular protests sponsored by Podemos.

According to the CNE, Venâncio Mondlane came in second place, with 20.32%, but he stated that he did not recognize these results, which still have to be validated and proclaimed by the CC.

Following the announcement of the results by the CNE, the Constitutional Council gave the commission eight days on 30 October to send the minutes and notices of the vote in Maputo and in six provinces, in order to validate the election results, which were contested by the opposition.

The demand by the CC, which has the jurisdiction of an electoral court in Mozambique, is contained in a warrant and certificate dated 30 October.

Source: Lusa