Maputo, 16 Oct (AIM) – Civil society observers say that they have recorded “a high level of fraud and misconduct by the electoral authorities, polling station staff, and members of the voter registration brigades” during Mozambique’s municipal elections.
The “Mais Integridade” (“More Integrity”) electoral consortium on Monday said the elections could not be described as transparent or fair.
The consortium consists of seven respected civil society bodies, namely the Episcopal Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church, the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), the Civil Society Learning and Training Centre (CESC), Solidarity Mozambique, the Forum of Mozambican Associations of the Disabled (FAMOD), the Nucleus of Zambezia Women’s Associations (NAFEZA), and the Mozambican chapter of the regional press freedom body, MISA (Media Institute of Southern Africa).
During the voting, last Wednesday, the consortium had 1,238 observers and 65 correspondents, covering all 65 municipalities, and undertook a parallel count of the votes in 16 municipalities.
The consortium chairperson, Edson Cortez, told a Monday press conference that “a particularly serious fraud occurred during the count when results sheets (“editais”) were adulterated”.
“We also noted the use of force by the defence and security forces to expel observers and opposition party monitors from the polling stations, and to divert ballot boxes to unknown locations”, Cortez added. “Members of the defence and security forces, who ought to act in a republican manner, acted in defence of the ruling political party”.
Cortez traced fraudulent and illegal behavior back to the voter registration (which ran from 20 April to 3 June). The real objective, he claimed, was “to ensure the massive registration of supporters of the Frelimo Party, and to make registration difficult for supporters of the opposition parties”.
Illicit “priority lists” of names were delivered to the registration brigades “who were inexplicably granted priority in registration to the detriment of other potential voters”.
After the “priority” voters were registered, there were mysterious breakdowns in the registration computers. This led to enormous queues of people attempting to register, and so “Mais Integridade” and the opposition parties called for an extension of the registration period.
The electoral bodies turned this request down, and merely extended the opening hours of the registration posts for the last few days of registration.
The observers also noted that people who did not live in the municipalities were bussed in from non-municipal areas in order to vote fraudulently in the municipal elections.
The procedures for the accreditation of observers, Cortez said, “were designed to make voter observation difficult”. Despite submitting all the required documents on time, “Mais Integridade” only received some of its credentials at 20.00 on 10 October, the day before the elections. This caused the consortium enormous difficulties in the logistics needed to ensure that observation could start when the polling stations opened.
In several municipalities (including Lichinga, Nacala, Nampula, Beira and Chimoio), polling station chairpersons and police agents prevented the Mais Integridade observers from watching the voting and the count. One method of obstruction used, Cortez said, was to demand an additional credential as well as the observer badge issued by the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE). There is no justification for this in any law or regulation.
The count of the votes at the polling stations should begin immediately after the polls have closed (normally at 18.00). But Mais Integridade found the count delayed at polling stations in Maputo, Matola, Nampula, Nacala, Gurue and Quelimane, until 21.00 or 22.00, supposedly because the staff were waiting for orders from STAE. Cortez said this was one of the reasons why the count did not finish until the following day.
Although STAE and the National Elections Commission (CNE) have experience in organising elections since 1994, the conditions for counting the votes remain poor with inadequate lighting.
Mais Integridade voters, said Cortez, “saw votes being counted in hundreds of classrooms without electric light. 48 years after national independence, counting the votes is still done by oil lamp, while buildings surrounding the schools have electricity”.
The CNE and STAE, he added, had purchased cars for their senior officials, and hired other vehicles and even helicopters “but was unable to buy lights to illuminate the classrooms, and give dignity to the work of all those involved”.
After the polling station count, Cortez accused, editais were replaced, and in other cases, when the result favoured the opposition, they were invalidated by polling station staff refusing to sign or stamp them.
Mais Integridade believed that corrective measures can still be taken. Perhaps the easiest would be to correct the result from Chiure, in Cabo Delgado province. The parallel count by the observers showed that Renamo won this municipality by 12,166 votes to Frelimo’s 11,366.
But the “intermediate count” at district level gave Frelimo 12,503 votes and Renamo 11,766. Mais Integridade called on the CNE to “restore the truth” of the Chiure result,
Where results are disputed, as in Maputo, Matola and Quelimane, Cortez suggested that the CNE should publicly post all the editais. They could then be checked against the copies of the editais that the opposition parties claim to possess.
He also called for enforcement of CNE decisions by the provincial and district election bodies, and by the polling station staff, ending their discretionary power which is used “to take arbitrary decisions contrary to the law”.
Finally, Cortez urged that the defence and security forces “should refrain from working in the service of one of the competing parties, and take a neutral and impartial stance for the good of Mozambican elections”.
(AIM)
Pf/ (925)
