by Bayano Valy – SANF 04 no 112
Following what seems to be an apparent major defeat in the 1-2 December poll, the Mozambican opposition Renamo party has decided to contest the popular verdict.
This follows a pattern started way back in 1994 when the country held the first multi-party elections in which President Joaquim Chissano and his ruling Frelimo party won.
Preliminary results give a comfortable win to Frelimo and its presidential candidate, Armando Guebuza. One newspaper, the Maputo Sunday paper Domingo calculates that Guebuza might have obtained 70 percent of the two-day election total vote, while his challenger, Renamo leader, Afonso Dhlakama, collected almost 27 percent.
Domingo also gives Frelimo some 69.5 percent against Renamo’s 25.5 percent of votes for seats in the National Assembly. However, these results do not match those being put forward by Frelimo, which would seem more conservative.
The ruling party’s parallel count points to a victory of 57 percent for Guebuza to Dhlakama’s 35 percent.
Frelimo’s tally is confirmed by the weekly independent Savana, which gives Guebuza 56 percent, and 34 percent to Dhlakama. On the other hand, Frelimo, according to the paper, got 63.6 percent of the vote, compared to Renamo’s 36.4.
Savana’s results seem to support those obtained by the Electoral Observatory, a coalition of civil society organisations headed by first chairperson of the country’s Electoral Commission (CNE) and Vice-Chancellor of Maputo’s public Eduardo Mondlane University, Brazão Mazula.
The Electoral Observatory’s sample count gives Armando Guebuza 63 percent of the presidential vote, against 32 percent for Dhlakama.
But Eduardo Namburete, head of Renamo’s electoral office, said that the party’s own projection suggests that the victory is theirs not Frelimo’s.
Namburete told SANF that “we’ll take the matter to the Constitutional Court.”
Renamo has compiled a 108-page document describing what it alleges to be massive fraud and crime, which it presented to the European Union and other diplomats.
In the document, Renamo claims that a large number of its delegates were chased away from the polling stations; that the ballot boxes were tampered with during the two voting days, with the intent to add votes for Guebuza and remove Dhlakama’s; that there was an unusually high number of invalid votes; incidents prior to the election, mainly the registration process.
Observers and seasoned journalists back some of the allegations, but they are quick to point out that even if all of Renamo’s claims are factored for, it is not enough to make a major change.
For example, the Electoral Observatory which covered 775 polling stations, six percent of the national total, reported vote stuffing in six stations which is just one percent of the total.
Journalist Joseph Hanlon, editor of the “Mozambique Political Process Bulletin”, a publication funded by AWEPA (European Parliamentarians for Africa), said that in one polling station votes for Dhlakama had been declared invalid.
But he was not the only one who fell victim to over-zealous polling officials. Votes meant for Guebuza had been declared invalid in two polling stations, Hanlon said.
There were four polling stations in the western province of Tete in which the turnout was very suspect compared to the country’s turnout put at below 40 percent. The four polling stations in the district of Changara turned out between 90.2 to 100.6 percent of voters, with nearly all the votes going to Guebuza.
The same pattern was observed in some polling stations in Maputo province, two districts in the southern Gaza province averaged 86 percent compared to the province’s 42 percent.
Even a thorough investigation of the blank and invalid votes showed that there was not an excessive number that they would swing the election result. There were only 3.8 percent of invalid presidential votes, and 3.4 percent of blank votes.
Renamo also claims that most polling stations did not open in areas where it supposedly has a strong backing, or the voters were turned away because they were no voters’ rolls. Observers say that there were cases where the voters’ roll was not at a particular polling station and this drove people away, but not enough to suggest massive fraud.
It is against this background that Renamo has attempted to delay the counting process in several provinces. All provinces have warehouses where ballot boxes are kept, and each warehouse has three locks. Thanks to the political nature of STAE (Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat), CNE’s executive arm, one key is held by its director, and the other two by Frelimo and Renamo deputy directors.
In Tete and in the northern Cabo Delgado province Renamo officials either refused to open the warehouses or just disappeared. Unfortunately, this means that counting had to be stopped.
In Tete, a Renamo delegate was trying to prevent sending of invalid votes to Maputo for reclassification.
However, this impasse was surmounted in both provinces when the provincial election commission (CPE) voted in favour of breaking the locks to allow counting to proceed.
Electronic problems have also delayed counting. In Nampula, Zambezia (the biggest constituencies) and Gaza vote tabulation had to be suspended because the three observer terminals stopped working, making it impossible to make print-outs.
In the central Sofala province counting stopped when it was discovered that the database sent from Maputo had an additional 69 polling stations. There are a total of 556 phantom polling stations nationwide.
This led STAE to issue instructions to all provincial STAE to bypass the audited software when producing the final results to avoid coming up with the wrong number of polling stations.
Nevertheless, STAE has promised it will meet the 17 December deadline of announcing national results. The CNE spokesperson, Filipe Manjate, said that 20.51 percent out of 13.612 results sheets for the presidential election have been processed, and they give Guebuza a lead of 81.67 percent, compared to Dhlakama’s 15.29 percent.
For legislative elections, Frelimo has amassed 77.21 percent of the 776,788 valid ballots counted so far, while Renamo has 15.66 percent.
Namburete said that Renamo only recognises being behind in Maputo, Gaza, Inhambane and Cabo Delgado. Asked to explain the big margin of votes for Frelimo and Guebuza in the remaining provinces, Namburete said that they were many irregularities which point out there fraud.
Meanwhile, Mozambican deputy Defence Minister, Henrique Banze, said that the continent and particularly SADC countries should have conflict prevention mechanisms to persuade those who lose elections to accept the results. (SARDC)
