Mozambique: Assembly approves budget for 2024 - AIM report
Photo: CIP Eleições
The local branch of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) in the district of Marromeu, in the central Mozambican province of Sofala, on Friday announced results from the repeat election in eight Marromeu polling stations, which bear no relation at all to the parallel count done at the polling stations by election observers.
These official results gave an impossible turnout, and transformed a victory for the main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, into a triumph for the ruling Frelimo Party.
The Constitutional Council, Mozambique’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law, validated the results of the 10 October local elections in 52 of the 53 municipalities – but it threw out the Marromeu result because of “serious irregularities which called into question the freedom, justice and transparency of the elections” at eight of the 39 polling stations.
The Council ordered a rerun of the election at those stations, which took place on Thursday. But, just like the first election, the rerun was marred by gross illegalities.
The law states that the count must begin immediately after the close of polls (at 18.00). But shortly after 20.00, television footage showed that the polling stations were almost deserted.
The polling station chairpersons had decided they should eat something before starting the count. Although they claim to have agreed this with the political party representatives, it is a serious violation of the law, leading to obvious suspicions that something crooked was being planned.
At about 20.30 the polling station staff (MMVs) were back in position, and the count could begin. But, according to the report in the “Mozambique Political Process Bulletin”, published by the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), when it became clear that Renamo had won by a substantial margin, the MMVs illegally expelled accredited journalists and observers from the polling stations.
The police removed the ballot papers and other election materials, and, again in clear violation of the law, results sheets were not posted at the stations, and copies of the results sheets were not given to political party monitors, observers or journalists.
But the police and MMVs were too late: by the time the observers were thrown out they had already taken note of the real results. These were published in Friday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Mediafax”. They showed that in the eight polling stations, 2,924 votes were cast. Renamo won with 1,798 (67.5 per cent of valid votes) to 791 for Frelimo (29.7 per cent) and 74 for the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) (2.8 per cent).
But when a STAE official, interviewed by the independent television station STV, read out the official results, the number of voters had dramatically increased, and victory was transferred to Frelimo.
These results were:
Total valid votes: 5,014
Frelimo: 3,807 (75.93 per cent)
Renamo: 1,112 (22.18 per cent)
MDM: 95 (1.89 per cent)
But Saturday’s issue of the Maputo daily, also citing STAE, gave inexplicably different figures – 3,817 for Frelimo, 966 for Renamo and 236 for the MDM. This works out to 5,019 valid votes.
There were also 23 blank ballots and 38 invalid votes. Since the number of registered voters at those eight polling stations is 5,904, the figures, both from STV and from “Noticias”,give a turnout on Thursday of slightly more than 86 per cent. If the figures are accurate, this would be the highest turnout for the municipal elections anywhere in
Mozambique. In most municipalities the turnout was between 55 and 65 per cent. The only municipality that recorded a turnout of over 75 per cent was the small town of Metangula on the shores of Lake Niassa, with a turnout of 77.31 per cent.
But the Marromeu figures cannot possibly be accurate. To obtain a turnout of 86 per cent, there would have been queues at all eight polling stations throughout the day. The voting procedures are such that, by AIM’s own observations elsewhere, it is almost impossible for even an efficient polling station to process a voter in less than a minute.
Observers reported long queues at the six polling stations located in the 25th June school early in the morning, but the turnout at the other two stations, in the Samora Machel School, was clearly low, with few voters turning up throughout the morning. The voting slowed down in the early afternoon, though short queues (10-15 people) were still noted at the 25th June school.
With a really high turnout, queues should persist throughout the day forcing the polling stations to remain open beyond the official closing time of 18.00. This did not happen in Marromeu.
Later on Friday, the Marromeu District Elections Commission (CDE) added the official results from the eight polling stations to the 10 October results from the other 31 stations to give what is known as the “intermediate count” for the entire municipality (intermediate, because it must still be confirmed by the National Elections Commission, CNE). This results sheet for the entire municipality was signed by only eight of the 15 members of the CDE.
This result was:
Number of valid votes: 19,007
Frelimo: 9,143 (48.1 per cent)
Renamo: 8,371 (44.04 per cent)
MDM: 1,493 (7.86 per cent)
By subtracting the results of the eight polling stations from the intermediate count, we can obtain the result from the 31 polling stations where the count was clean.
The result for the 31 stations was as follows:
Number of valid votes: 13,993
Renamo: 7,259 (51.81 per cent)
Frelimo: 5,366 (38.13 per cent)
MDM: 1,398 (9.9 per cent)
In other words, the Frelimo victory in Marromeu is entirely the product of the results sheets from the eight stations where the election was re-run on Thursday.
Renamo national election agent Andre Magibire announced that his party is appealing against the results. Renamo ought to make its complaints in the first instance at the polling stations themselves, and the kits delivered to each station contain protest forms that political party monitors can use.
But, interviewed by STV, Magibire said this was quite impossible, because the polling station chairpersons not only failed to hand over the forms, but simply abandoned their positions, when the police took the ballot boxes. “They just ran away”, he said.
So Renamo, following the correct procedure, went to lodge its complaint with the district police command. Magibire said at that time of night only a junior officer was present – so he intended to return on Friday to deposit the complaint with the commander.
Repetição da eleição autárquica em Marromeu:
STAE Distrital de Marromeu com portas fechadas esta manhã, 23 de Novembro de 2018. Observadores querendo apresentar o seu posicionamento sobre o processo não encontraram ninguém para lhes atender.
Fonte: Sala da Paz pic.twitter.com/qMEH6JwDtQ
— Txeka (@TxekaMoz) November 23, 2018
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