Paul Fauvet
23 November 2008
Maputo — Mozambique's electoral bodies on Saturday issued two sets of conflicting figures for the results of Wednesday's local elections in the northern port of Nacala.
The difference between them is only a few hundred votes - but on one set of figures the candidate for mayor from the ruling Frelimo Party, Chale Ossufo, has slightly less than 50 per cent of the valid votes, and on the other he has slightly more.
Under Mozambican legislation, if no candidate has more than 50 per cent of the vote in a mayoral election, there must be a second round. On the first set of figures, a second round between Ossufo and his main rival, the current mayor and candidate of the former rebel movement Renamo, Manuel dos Santos, a second round looks almost certain, and on the second set of figures much less so.
The first figures are the provisional count announced by the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the civil service. This count gave the following result:
Chale Ossufo (Frelimo): 21,843 (49.3 per cent) Manuel dos Santos (Renamo: 21,504 (48.6 per cent) Juliao Cipriano (PDD): 444 (1.0 per cent) Cesar Gabriel (OCINA): 505 (1.1 per cent).
This is very close to the poling station count done by Renamo, which gave Ossufo 49.5 per cent, and dos Santos 48.3 per cent. A parallel count done by the main domestic observers' group, the Electoral Observatory, on 98 of the 99 Nacala polling stations gave Ossufo 49.8 per cent and dos Santos 48.06 per cent. All these counts strongly suggest that a second round will be needed.
But also on Saturday, the Nacala District Elections Commission (CDE) announced the result from its intermediate count (intermediate because t is between the initial count at the polling stations, and the final count verified by the National Elections Commission). This count pushes Ossufo over the 50 per cent threshold. The result announced by the CDE was: Chale Ossufo (Frelimo): 22,590 (50.3 per cent) Manuel dos Santos (Renamo: 21,348 (47.5 per cent) Juliao Cipriano (PDD): 441 (0.9 per cent) Cesar Gabriel (OCINA): 514 (1.1 per cent).
For the three losing candidates the differences are not hugely significant. But in the intermediate count, Ossufo has somehow acquired 747 votes more than in the STAE provisional count.
It is still too early to suggest that foul play is involved. It is perfectly possible that either the CDE or STAE made mathematical mistakes in adding up the 99 results sheets. Given that the STAE, Electoral Observatory and Renamo counts are all so close, the presumption must be that the mistake is in the CDE count.
Both the STAE and CDE figures were reached manually - none of the results sheets has yet been put through a computer. That is the next stage. Across the country, the results sheets ("editais") from all the municipal elections will be put through the software devised for the CNE by the company Soft, Ltd.
The results are then put on CD-Roms and sent to the CNE in Maputo, which will check the computerized version against the intermediate counts. The computers should catch and correct mistakes in the arithmetic. They should also throw out any editais which have been tampered with, and where the figures no longer make sense. Any editais which contain illegitimate erasures will not be input into the computers.
All Mozambican elections throw up some "problem editais" which have to be rejected. But since the political party polling station monitors should each have been given a copy of the edital, in principle these copies can be used as a check (although this would require collaboration between Frelimo and Renamo).
A further complicating factor is the "requalification" of votes declared invalid at the polling stations. Polling station staff tend to be strict in interpreting the rules, and reject as invalid ballots where the voter has made a slight mistake (for instance, by putting his cross beside the box of his favoured candidate rather than inside it).
The CNE must look at all these ballots and will "requalify" as valid those where it believes the voter has made a choice. In Nacala, 2,883 votes were declared invalid - if the CNE rules that a significant number of these are in fact Renamo votes, then this could push Ossufo Chale below the 50 per cent mark, even if the CDE arithmetic is correct.
In Nacala, after announcing the CDE intermediate count, the chairperson of the Commission, Andre Choquemare, said that, based on these figures, there was no need for a second round. However, he was forced to admit that, depending on the requalification of the supposedly invalid votes, the CNE might decide otherwise.
Choquemare also said that 2,755 blank ballots were cast, and that 39,147 registered Nacala voters abstained. This means there was a 56 per cent turnout in Nacala, which is considerably higher than the turnout in many other municipalities.
Pf/ (826)
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