
Maputo, 15 Dec (AIM) – Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, on Thursday took its fight against the results of the 11 October municipal elections, which it regards as fraudulent, to the Maputo diplomatic corps.
Cited in Friday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Mediafax”, the Renamo candidate for mayor of Maputo, Venancio Mondlane, said the purpose of the meeting was to share with the diplomats the reasons why Renamo opposed the results.
Mondlane admitted that, in previous elections, Renamo had not been able to prove its claims of fraud. But this year was different, because Renamo had been able to place its poll monitors at all 900 polling stations in Maputo city, which gave it access to all the city’s polling station minutes and results sheets (“editais”).
Renamo established ten teams which systematised all the data from the results sheets and sent it to a central point. As a result, said Mondlane, by the early morning of 12 October, Renamo had the complete results from Maputo, which showed that Renamo had won 55 per cent of the votes.
Renamo has put the editais on the Internet. The ruling Frelimo Party has not published the results which it claims gave it victory. Likewise neither the National Elections Commission (CNE) nor the Constitutional Council have published the editais they used.
In recalculating the Maputo results, the Council took tens of thousands of votes away from Frelimo and gave them to Renamo – but this still left Frelimo in overall control of the Maputo Municipal Assembly.
Mondlane told the diplomats that Renamo’s parallel vote count showed that the CNE’s district bodies had given an extra 33,000 votes to Frelimo and had illicitly subtracted 65,000 votes from Renamo.
Mondlane admitted that it is not possible to appeal against Constitutional Council rulings – but that is not an obstacle to citizens demanding to know how the Council arrived at its result. So far the Council has not replied to the requests for more information.
The Council altered the preliminary results in nine municipalities. In every case the Renamo vote increased (even if it did not win), and the Frelimo vote shrank.
But rather than explain in detail why it had made these changes, the Constitutional Council simply said, in each and every case, “the results proceeded from the re-verification of the data in accordance with the proof produced”.
It did not state what this proof was or what data had been rechecked. The polling station editais are the only source for election results. But the Council did not say which editais it had used.
Also on Thursday, Renamo general secretary Clementina Bomba denounced the repeat elections, held on 10 December in the municipalities of Marromeu, Nacala-Port, Gurue and Milange, as just as fraudulent as the initial elections of 11 October.
She told as Maputo press conference that the same officials who rigged the elections in October in Frelimo’s favour were still in place on 10 December. As a result, the frauds were repeated.
“These acts are a real liquidation of democracy and denial of peace”, Bomba said.
In Marromeu, she added, the police had arrested illegally several Renamo polling station monitors, and took away ballot boxes to prevent electoral transparency and the production of results sheets”.
She noted the police resort to tear gas and to live ammunition against crowds of Renamo demonstrators. On Tuesday, a police bullet claimed the life of a trader in the Marromeu fish market, who was not even part of the Renamo protest.
(AIM)
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