4 December 2008
Maputo — The chairperson of Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE), Joao Leopoldo da Costa, on Thursday announced the official results from the 19 November municipal elections.
The results contained no surprises - they confirmed the provisional results announced earlier by the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the civil service, and the parallel count carried out by the largest group of Mozambican electoral observers, the Electoral Observatory.
The results declared by Costa showed an enormous triumph by the ruling Frelimo Party. Frelimo mayors have been elected in 41 of the 43 municipalities, and there is a Frelimo majority in 42 municipal assemblies.
The main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, suffered a humiliating defeat, losing four of the five municipalities that it had won in the previous elections in 2003. Renamo's defeat was so crushing that there are now nine municipalities in which it does not hold a single seat on the municipal assembly (in 2003, there were only two assemblies without Renamo representation).
The worst of Renamo's defeats was self-inflicted. It lost its key stronghold, the central city of Beira, not to Frelimo, but to the current mayor, Daviz Simango, who was expelled from Renamo in September.
Renamo had originally planned to run Simango for a second term. But on 28 August, Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, at the urging of a handful of former guerrillas in Beira, notably the Renamo Sofala provincial delegate, Fernando Mbararano, ditched Simango, and imposed a Renamo parliamentarian, Manuel Pereira, as candidate for mayor.
Simango refused to go quietly, and Renamo supporters in Beira flocked to him rather than Pereira. The result was a personal triumph for Simango, and proof that Frelimo is not invincible. Popular and charismatic opposition candidates can win- but Renamo does not have many people who fit that description.
The final Beira mayoral result was:
Daviz Simango (Independent) 76,734 (61.61 per cent) Lourenco Bulha (Frelimo) 42,003 (33.73 per centt) Manuel Pereira (Renamo) 3,316 (2.66 per cent) Antonio Romao (PDD) 1,718 (1.38 per cent) Filipe Alfredo (Independent) 768 (0.62 per cent)
Renamo also lost its majority in the Beira municipal assembly. As the parallel count had predicted, no party enjoys a majority in the Assembly. The results were:
Frelimo 51,374 (41.51 per cent) 19 seats Renamo 46,063 (37.21 per cent) 17 seats GDB 19,333 (15.62 per cent) 7 seats PIMO 4,169 (3.37 per cent) 1 seat PDD 2,823 (2.28 per cent) 1 seat
The GDB is the Group for Democracy in Beira, an independent organisation unheard of before these elections. It seems to have done well because it was in last position on the assembly ballot paper, the same position occupied by Simango on the mayoral ballot. Many Beira citizens apparently imagined that this was the independent group backing Simango. In fact, the group supporting Simango is the GRM (Reflection and Change Group), which ran no candidates for the assembly.
In one municipality, a second round must be held because no candidate secured 50 per cent of the vote on 19 November. This is the northern port of Nacala, where the Frelimo candidate, Chale Ossufo, narrowly beat the incumbent Renamo mayor, Manuel dos Santos, but not by enough to avoid a run-off. The final result was:
Chale Ossufo (Frelimo) 22,736 (49.84 per cent) Manuel dos Santos (Renamo) 21,812 (47.81 per cent) Cesar Caisse (OCINA) 558 (1.22 per cent) Juliao Cipriano (PDD) 512 (1.12 per cent)
The second round, between Ossufo and dos Santos, will probably be held in January. So Renamo can still hope to win one municipality.
In the election for the Nacala municipal assembly, Frelimo had the same narrow margin of victory, and so the new assembly will consist of 20 Frelimo members and 19 Renamo ones.
Renamo also did surprisingly well in the town of Gurue, in the central province of Zambezia. Here the Frelimo candidate, Jose Fernando, was almost forced into a second round. He won exactly 5,000 votes: this was 50.03 per cent of the valid votes, and thus he avoided a run-off against the Renamo candidade, former catholic priest Latino Ligonha, who won 47.17 per cent.
And at this point the good news for Renamo ran out. The picture in all other municipalities was bleak for the opposition.
Costa announced that Renamo had lodged a series of appeals with the CNE, some of them dating back to irregularities that supposedly occurred during voter registration in July. The CNE rejected all of them, because none of them were based on complaints submitted by the Renamo monitors at the polling stations.
The electoral law is quite clear: political parties must protest against any irregularities during voting or the count at the time they occur, and not days later. The Renamo monitors did protest against a handful of ballot papers which the polling station staff ruled as invalid, but which they said expressed a preference for the Renamo candidates. These "protested votes", like all the votes declared invalid at the polling stations, were re-examined by the CNE , and where the CNE considered that a preference could be detected they were added to the total for the candidates concerned.
But there are no other complaints from the Renamo monitors recorded in the minutes from any of the 3,125 polling stations. Renamo subsequently complained that Frelimo trucked in huge number of its supporters from outside the municipal areas to vote illicitly - but no Renamo monitor reported anything of the sort.
Costa announced that, for the first time, the declaration of results was signed by all members of the CNE (in other words, the two CNE members appointed by Renamo signed, alongside the three appointed by Frelimo and the eight from civil society. This is a sharp contrast to the bitter divisions within the previous CNE that supervised the 2004 general elections).
Costa also said that all the polling stations had opened, and all the polling station results sheets could be used to calculate the results. This was very different from 2004, when hundreds of results sheets were stolen or went missing, or contained mistakes that could not be corrected.
The immediate response to the results from the Renamo national spokesperson, Fernando Mazanga, was that "these elections are the assassination of Mozambican democracy". He said that Renamo has appealed against the results to the Constitutional Council, the body that must validate the results and has the final say in all election disputes.
The Constitutional Council must give its ruling on the elections within 15 days (i.e. by 19 December).
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