By Paul Fauvet
Maputo, 28 Oct (MOZ TIMES) – The Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), which supported the independent candidate Venâncio Mondlane, in the presidential election of 9 October, has published its parallel count of the votes, which gives a clear victory to Mondlane.
The results from the parallel count, for the four presidential candidates, were as follows:
Lutero Simango (MDM): 379,247 (4.92 per cent)
Daniel Chapo (FRELIMO): 2,906,601 (35.66 per cent)
Venancio Mondlane (independent): 4,419,040 (53.38 per cent)
Ossufo Momade (RENAMO) 539,515 (6.04 per cent)
This is dramatically different from the official figures released last Thursday by the National Elections Commission (CNE) which gave Chapo victory with over 70 per cent of the votes, with Mondlane a distant runner-up, with around 20 per cent.
In the parliamentary election, PODEMOS claims that its parallel count gives it a sizeable majority in the new parliament. It will have 138 out of the 250 seats, compared with 91 for FRELIMO, 12 for RENAMO and seven for the MDM.
By comparison, the CNE’s results allocated 195 seats to FRELIMO, and just 55 to the opposition forces.
The parallel count forms part of the PODEMOS appeal against the results to the Constitutional Council, Mozambique’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law. But it comes with several major caveats.
First, it is not a parallel count of all the votes. The PODEMOS count is of 71.7 per cent of the polling stations. Although PODEMOS believed this is “a very credible sample”, it falls well short of 100 per cent.
PODEMOS says it could not cover all the polling stations because in some cases the electoral bodies refused to issue credentials for its monitors, in others the credentials were stolen and the CNE refused to issue new ones, and in still others the credentials were for districts other than the ones requested.
At some polling stations, the staff refused to announce the results of the count or to sign the results sheets (“editais”).
Worse still, there were cases where the results of the count were fraudulently altered. In others, the editais from different polling stations were filled in and signed by the same person. Such clearly fake results sheets could not be used for the parallel count.
PODEMOS also complained of mass allocation of FRELIMO members as MMVs, and of detentions and expulsions of opposition monitors.
All these constraints made it impossible to obtain 100 per cent of the polling station minutes and editais. PODEMOS says it is appending the “manifestly fraudulent minutes and editais” in its appeal to the Constitutional Council as proof of election fraud. (PF)
