New results sheets are being forged, claims Mondlane

Maputo, 3 Nov (AIM) – Mozambique’s fugitive opposition leader, Venancio Mondlane, on Saturday night claimed that the request by the Constitutional Council for the National Elections Commission (CNE) to provide it with all the polling station results sheets (“editais”) from seven of the 11 provincial constituencies is a sham.

Speaking from an undisclosed location in a live broadcast on his Facebook page, he claimed that polling station staff are in reality being recalled to write new, and therefore fake, editais.  This claim has also been made repeatedly on Mozambican social media over the last few days.

But Mondlane produced no evidence for this allegation. Given the CNE’s reputation for fraudulent and incompetent behavior, it is possible that fake editais are being created. But a possibility is not a fact.

The seven provinces concerned (Maputo city, Maputo province, Gaza, Inhambane, Tete, Zambezia and Nampula) account for well over half of the 25,000 or so polling stations that operated during the general elections of 9 October.

Recalling tens of thousands of polling station staff (MMVs) to create forged editais would be a gargantuan task, and one that is difficult to believe without solid evidence.

Even worse, Mondlane has not yet produced his own copies of the editais from the 9 October elections. At each polling station, all the parties and candidates are entitled to a copy of the edital and of the minutes.

These are the only documents on which a claim of victory can be based. Within hours of the close of polls, Mondlane declared that the documents prove that he won the presidential election, and that the main party backing him, Podemos, won the parliamentary election.

If these claims are true, it should be an easy matter to prove them by posting all the polling station minutes and editais on a webpage, where they can be compared with the documents in the possession of the CNE and of the other candidates.

But to date Mondlane, just like the CNE, has not posted any of the editais he claims to possess.  

Mondlane’s latest broadcast contained little that was new. It urged continuing demonstrations against the official results, culminating in a “march on Maputo” next Thursday.

He claimed there are already demonstrations in all districts and in all urban neighbourhoods. This is simply untrue: while the demonstrations have reached a large number of districts, they by no means cover the entire country.

On Saturday, some of the demonstrations were peaceful, while others were extremely violent. Some of the worst scenes happened in the town of Mecuburi, in the northern province of Nampula.

According to an account in the latst issue of the Bulletin on the elections published by the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), a crowd attacked the local office of the ruling Frelimo Party and set it on fire.

The police reacted with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition. In this clash one of the demonstrators was killed. In retaliation, the crowd burnt down the house of the policeman who fired the fatal shot.

In Maputo, a peaceful demonstration by members of the moslem and hindu communities ended in chaos when, for no obvious reason, the police fired tear gas at them.

These demonstrators had gathered in central Maputo to protest, not only against the election results, but against the kidnappings that have been terrorizing the business community since 2011.

The demonstrators were mostly traders of Asian origin. One of them was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet, which caused a deep wound.

Mondlane has also stepped up his rhetoric. He had previously claimed that his proposed “march on Maputo” was in protest at “the murder of the Mozambican people”. Now he suggested that the Mozambican government is committing “genocide”, a use of the term which trivializes the mass murder happening in, for example, Sudan or the Gaza Strip.

The strikes and demonstrations have had a damaging effect on the Mozambican economy, but they have not brought the country to a standstill, as Mondlane had boasted. In Maputo many shops and restaurants reopened, and informal traders were as busy as ever on the pavements.

Mondlane had wanted Saturday and Sunday to be used to prepare for the “march on Maputo”, but there is no sign that this call was taken seriously.

(AIM)

Pf/ (725)