23 November 2008
Maputo — Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, has denounced last Wednesday's local elections on Mozambique Island, in the northern province of Nampula, as fraudulent, and has demanded "a second round".
The mayoral results, as announced by the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the civil service, gave the candidate of the ruling Frelimo Party, Alfredo Matata, over 3,700 votes more than his Renamo rival and current mayor, Gulamo Mamudo. These results were:
Alfredo Matata (Frelimo): 8,176 Gulamo Mamudo (Renamo): 4,418 Muahija Abudo (PDD): 84
"We don't agree with these results", the Renamo spokesperson on Mozambique Island, Amade Ernesto, told AIM. "These elections were neither fair nor transparent".
He claimed that Renamo has carried out a survey in Mozambique Island neighbourhoods which shows that 8,000 of its supporters were unable to vote. "This happened because the polling stations closed at 17.00 when hundreds of people still wanted to vote", he said.
Ernesto also alleged that young Frelimo supporters voted more than once because the indelible ink used to mark voters' index fingers, as a check against voting twice, was "false", and did not last long on the voters' fingers.
He added that, during the election, groups of Frelimo members obstructed the queues of voters to prevent elderly people, regarded as probable Renamo voters, from casting their ballots. When three Renamo members confronted the Frelimo youths, asking them to desist, all thee were arrested, Ernesto claimed.
He said that in one polling station in the Massicote neighbourhood, four Renamo members were unable to vote because the neighbourhood secretary (whom he named as Selemane Ali) had confiscated their voter cards three days earlier.
In the Nathemba neighbourhood, Ernesto said that one man was found early in the morning arrested with four ballot papers already marked in favour of Frelimo. The police arrested the man, and then let him go, Ernesto complained.
"In Tocolo, in the polling station a voter dropped o the floor several ballot papers already marked in favour of Frelimo", he continued. "We have all these cases registered and we are submitting a protest to the District and Provincial Elections Commissions".
Other Renamo complaints were that some of their polling station monitors could not do their job because their credentials were stolen, and that people under the voting age of 18 were allowed to vote.
"We are awaiting the reaction of the electoral bodies and the central guidelines from our party, but we shall not rest until a second round of elections us held to allow all citizens the right to choose", said Ernesto.
"We will only agree with defeat when a considerable number of voters have voted. We will do everything possible, including demonstrations, so that our protest may be heard", he declared.
Ernesto is using the wrong term. A second round has nothing to do with fraud in the first round. A second round is held if no candidate for mayor wins over 50 per cent of the vote in the first round. What Ernesto is really suggesting is that the election on Mozambique Island be cancelled, and fresh elections held.
On one of his points, Ernesto is substantially correct. Polling stations did close while large numbers of people were still queuing up to vote. But he got the time wrong - they closed at 18.00, not 17.00.
The legislation states that the polling stations should open at 07.00 and close at 18.00 - but anybody still in the queue at 18.00 must be allowed to vote. Observers from the main domestic observer group, the Electoral Observatory, say that at least 14 polling stations on Mozambique Island closed at 18.00, despite long queues of would-be voters. But this illegal decision was made after the polling station staff consulted with the political party monitors, including those from Renamo. Thus the Renamo monitors consented to the disenfranchisement of large numbers of Mozambique Island residents.
The story of the ballot papers marked in advance in favour of Frelimo has several problems. The first is mathematical. The result of introducing extra ballot papers would be that the number of papers in the box would be more than the number of voters ticked off the register. This can sometimes happen because polling station staff become tired and forget to tick the register. But if this fraud happened on any significant scale it would be very noticeable.
Furthermore, the ballot papers are in kits that are unlocked in front of observers and polling station monitors. Those kits only arrived at the polling stations a few hours before they opened. Smuggling ballot papers out for illicit use would require the collaboration, not only of polling station staff, but also of the Renamo monitors.
So what were these papers allegedly found in the possession of Frelimo supporters? During the election campaign Frelimo distributed mock ballot papers in order to show its supporters, particularly illiterate ones, where to find the Frelimo candidate on the real ballot paper.
The mock ballots cannot be confused with the real thing because they are printed on different paper, and do not give the names of any party other than Frelimo. But excitable Renamo supporters, seeing what looks like a ballot paper fall out of somebody's pocket might jump to the wrong conclusion.
As for the supposedly phoney ink, this could confer no special advantage on Frelimo - since if it could be rubbed off the fingers of Frelimo voters, it could also be removed from the fingers of Renamo ones. The ink cannot tell the difference. This story of "false ink" has not been heard from anywhere else in the country, and it seems less than probable that a special kind of dud ink would be devised solely for Mozambique Island.
Renamo has often claimed that Frelimo makes a habit of "confiscating" voter cards. This would be a poor way of stealing an election, since people who have lost their voter cards can still vote provided their names are on the electoral register and they can produce some other form of identity document which contains a photograph (such as a passport or identity card).
This is not to say that the elections in Mozambique Island were above suspicion. Far from it - detailed analysis of the Mozambique Island results show grounds for concern, notably in the suspiciously high number of supposedly invalid votes cast at some of the polling stations. But Renamo has not picked up these real difficulties.
Pf/ (1084)
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