Maputo, 27 Oct (AIM) – Mozambique’s National Elections Commission (CNE) on Thursday announced provisional results from the municipal elections held on 11 October, claimed that the ruling Frelimo Party had won in all but one of the 65 municipalities.
The only municipality that escaped Frelimo control was the central city of Beira. Here the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) retained its dominance with 58.16 per cent of the vote.
Some of the media have claimed that these are “definitive” results. They are nothing of the sort – the final results can only be validated and proclaimed by the Constitutional Council.
The Council still has to decide on many appeals against the results, mostly submitted by the main opposition force, Renamo. It could easily change the results announced by the CNE.
Those results all came from the various district and city elections commission, which are subordinate to the CNE. The CNE made no changes to the results from the districts.
The CNE is deeply divided. At the CNE meeting on Wednesday, which ran on into Thursday morning, eight members, all appointed by or supportive of Frelimo, voted in favour of accepting the results. The five supporters of Renamo or the MDM voted against.
Two CNE members – the chairperson, Anglican Bishop Carlos Matsinhe, and journalist Salomao Moyana – abstained. Two Renamo members, CNE deputy chairperson, Fernando Mazanga, and Anastacia Xavier were absent from the vote, on grounds of ill health.
The same split occurred over whether to announce the provisional results or delay them until after the Constitutional Council has dealt with all the appeals.
The pro-Frelimo members wanted them announced at once, but the others, according to Bishop Matsinhe, “believe that it is pertinent to allow the legal procedures to run their course”, since the CNE has no power to handle the appeals.
Reading out the results, Matsinhe revealed that in the vast majority of district elections commissions there was no consensus on the results. Votes had to be taken everywhere except Mueda (in Cabo Delgado province), Mutarara (in Tete) and all six municipalities in Manica province.
The divisions are the result of the deep politicization of the electoral bodies, which are dominated by the three political parties with seats in parliament.
The electoral law states that, of the 17 members of the CNE, five are appointed by Frelimo, four by Renamo and one by the MDM.
The other seven come from civil society. But there is no mechanism whereby civil society appoints them. Instead, civil society organisations submit names which then go an ad-hoc commission of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic.
So the supposedly civil society members of the CNE are in reality selected by the political parties in the Assembly.
This politicization is repeated in all the provincial and district elections commissions, and in all branches of the CNE’s executive arm, the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE).
The results announced by the CNE take no account of the parallel vote counts undertaken by credible election observation bodies. These parallel counts suggest that Renamo won the elections in major cities, including Maputo, Matola, Nampula and Quelimane.
Could these parallel vote counts possibly be wrong or faked? There is an easy way of checking this – the CNE could have compared the polling station results sheets (“editais”) used by the observers, and the editais in the possession of the district commissions. But no such comparison was ever ordered.
(AIM)
Pf/ (577)