
Fachada frontal do edificio do Conselho Constitucional. Foto de Ferhat Momade
Maputo, 31 Oct (AIM) – The Constitutional Council, Mozambique’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law has demanded that the National Elections Commission (CNE) give it the polling station minutes and results sheets (“editais”) from seven of the country’s 11 provincial constituencies.
The Council chairperson. Lucia Ribeiro, issued the demand on Wednesday, and gave the CNE eight days to comply.
The provinces concerned are Maputo city, Maputo province, Gaza, Inhambane, Tete, Zambezia and Nampula. Together, these provinces account for the great majority of the over 25,000 polling stations that were in operation during the general elections held on 9 October.
The demand suggests that the Council does not believe the extremely summary results issued by the CNE last week. Like national and foreign observers (notably the European Union observation mission), the Constitutional Council wants to see the results polling station by polling station, and not merely aggregated by province or district
The Council has good reason not to trust the CNE. In the 2023 municipal elections, the Council found the results delivered by the CNE so untrustworthy, that it made major changes. Three municipalities which the CNE had initially allocated to the ruling Frelimo Party were given to the main opposition force, Renamo, instead.
In the Maputo and Matola municipalities the Council transferred tens of thousands of votes from Frelimo to Renamo. Independent parallel counts indicated that Renamo had won in both municipalities: while the Council did not go so far as to hand the two cities over to Renamo control, its intervention suggested that it had found significant levels of fraud in the CNE’s results.
The electoral law does not give the Constitutional Council a deadline for validating and proclaiming the final results. But investigating results sheets from seven provinces will clearly take a long time.
(AIM)
Pf/ (306)