5 November 2009
Maputo — In last week's elections for Mozambique's first provincial assemblies, a huge number of blank ballots were cast in several of the 13 districts in the central province of Sofala.
And it is not hard to see why - although Sofala was long regarded as a stronghold of the main opposition party, Renamo, the party's name only appeared on the ballot paper for two of the 13 district constituencies in the provincial election.
Although it was Renamo that had insisted on including provincial assemblies in the 2004 amendments to the constitution, in practice Renamo paid little attention to its lists of candidates for the district constituencies. It concentrated instead on the bid of its leader, Afonso Dhlakama, for the presidency, and on submitting complete lists of candidates for the 13 parliamentary constituencies.
The paper work for its provincial candidates was neglected. As a result the CNE rejected Renamo lists for district constituencies all over the country. In Sofala, the situation was complicated by the fact that so many Renamo militants defected and joined the breakaway Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM).
So the ruling Frelimo Party ended up competing in all 13 Sofala district constituencies, the MDM in seven of them and Renamo in only two. The Renamo leadership clearly believed that the CNE had acted correctly, for it did not protest against the exclusion, or appeal to the Constitutional Council.
The result was that Renamo voters in much of Sofala found themselves faced with three ballot papers, with their party on two of them (for the president and for parliament), but not on the third (for the provincial assembly).
They seem to have reacted to this by casting blank ballots for the provincial assembly as a protest vote.
The details of the Sofala provincial assembly vote, carried by the Beira daily "Diario de Mocambique" show that where there was political competition, the number of blank ballots tended to fall to a reasonable level. Thus in Beira, where Frelimo, the MDM and Renamo were all on the ballot paper, only 2.2 per cent of votes cast were blank and 2.5 per cent were invalid.
Where it was a straight fight between Frelimo and Renamo in Cheringoma, 3.4 per cent of the votes were blank and 8.6 per cent invalid. But in Chibabava, Dhlakama's home district, where only Frelimo's name appeared on the ballot paper, 43 per cent of all votes cast were blank.
The situation was similar in Caia, where Dhlakama won in the presidential election. Here, surprised to find only Frelimo's name on the ballot paper, the voters reacted by dropping blank votes (22.7 per cent of the total) or invalid votes (15.4 per cent) into the ballot box.
In Gorongosa, 28.7 per cent of the votes cast were blank. In districts where Frelimo and the MDM were on the ballot, but not Renamo, there was also a high number of blank votes - for example, 18.1 per cent in Buzi, and 14.9 per cent in Chemba.
But there was another protest option - refuse to accept the ballot paper. The figures suggest that many Sofala voters took and used presidential, and parliamentary ballot papers but declined the provincial one.
This seems clear from turnout figures. In Beira, 51.7 per cent of the electorate voted, which is quite high by the standards of this election, and in Cheringoma the turnout was 53.3 per cent.
But in Chibabava only 45.3 per cent voted in the provincial election, in Nhamatanda only 30.8 per cent, and in Caia a mere 29.7 per cent.
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