23 November 2008
Maputo — Mozambique's ruling Frelimo Party has welcomed the announcement of the local election results in the central city of Quelimane, while the main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, has denounced alleged "irregularities" in the voting.
The provisional count in Quelimane, as announced by the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the civil service, showed that the Frelimo candidate, the currant mayor Pio Matos, won by almost 5,000 votes. The result of the mayoral election was:
Pio Matos (Frelimo): 23,846 Latifo Xarifo (Renamo): 18,899 Ana Baptista (PDD): 618
In the election for members of the municipal assembly, Frelimo won by an even larger majority:
Frelimo: 23,585 Renamo: 16,592 PDD: 363 PIMO: 92
For Frelimo, these figures express "a conscious vote" by the citizens of Quelimane. "These results were to be expected", said Frelimo representative Antonio Moldegussa. "They come from the mass work undertaken and from the awareness of the citizens themselves". He also claimed that election observers in the city had described the Quelimane election as "free and fair".
But Renamo election agent Leopoldo Ernesto, while praising the work of the electoral bodies claimed there had been "irregularities" during the count.
He said that STAE and the City Elections Commission had only used the polling station results sheets ("editais") and not the polling station minutes as well. "This makes it difficult to understand concrete situations that took place at the polling stations", he said.
"It is important that all the material should be present when drawing up a balance sheet, because there are situations that lead to doubtful interpretations", said Ernesto. He cited in particular cases with anomalously high (over 120) votes declared invalid at a single polling station.
"It is through the minutes that we can understand what went on", he said.
So far the count has been exclusively manual, adding up, with the help of manual calculators, the votes from all the polling stations. In the next stage, to produce final results, the editais will be fed into computers, which should detect any serious anomalies. The polling station minutes can be used by the National Elections Commission (CNE) and eventually by the Constitutional Council, the body that must validate and proclaim the results.
If Renamo polling station monitors made any protests, these should be included in the minutes.
Ernesto said he would wait for the final results before taking a definitive position.
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