12 November 2009
Maputo — Mozambique's ruling Frelimo Party will have an overwhelming majority of seats in the incoming parliament, according to the results of the 28 October general elections, officially announced in Maputo on Wednesday by the National Elections Commission (CNE).
Frelimo will hold 191 of the 250 seats. The main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, will have 51, and the breakaway Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), led by the mayor of Beira, Daviz Simango will hold the remaining eight.
Frelimo has a majority of seats in every province except Sofala where it holds 10 seats and the combined opposition also has 10.
The results are slightly different from those announced in the provinces, in that Renamo has gained two seats from Frelimo - one in Niassa, and one in Sofala. This can only have resulted from the CNE's "requalification" of the votes declared as invalid at the polling stations.
Every blank and invalid ballot is sent to the CNE for confirmation. In all elections there has been a trend for polling station staff to interpret the rules strictly, and to throw out as invalid ballots where the voter has put his cross or fingerprint slightly outside the box of his preferred candidate.
Where the CNE judges that the voter's intention was clear, such votes are rescued and given back to the candidates. In all the elections to date, this procedure has tended to benefit Renamo more than Frelimo.
However, the CNE could not rescue votes that were fraudulently invalidated, when a member of the polling station staff added an ink mark to make it seem as if the voter had tried to vote for two candidates. The law states explicitly that any ballot paper with marks against two or more candidates must be regarded as invalid - doubtless the legislators did not imagine that unscrupulous or corrupt staff would defraud the will of the voters.
The final breakdown of seats by constituency is as follows. For purposes of comparison, the number of seats won in 2004 is put in brackets.
Constituency Seats Frelimo Renamo MDM Niassa 14 (12) 12 (9) 2 (3) 0 Cabo Delgado 22 (22) 19 (18) 3 (4) - Nampula 45 (50) 32 (27) 13 (23) - Zambezia 45 (48) 26 (19) 19 (29) - Tete 20 (18) 18 (14) 2 (4) - Manica 16 (14) 12 (7) 4 (7) - Sofala 20 (22) 10 (6) 5 (18) 5 Inhambane 16 (16) 15 (15) 1 (1) 0 Gaza 16 (17) 16 (17) 0 (0) - Maputo Province 16 (13) 15 (12) 1 (1) - Maputo City 18 (16) 14 (14) 1 (2) 3 Africa 1 (1) 1 (1) 0 (0) - Rest of world 1 (1) 1 (1) 0 (0) - Total 250 (250) 191 (160) 51 (90) 8
Since the MDM was only founded in March this year, these are the first elections in which it has participated.
The comparison with 2004 is flawed because in that year, as in 1999, Renamo competed as part of a coalition, the Renamo-Electoral Union, with ten minor parties. The bitter split within Renamo that gave rise to the MDM means that several of the eight MDM deputies are not new to parliament - they were Renamo-Electoral Union deputies in the previous parliament.
The changes in the number of seats per province reflects the changes in the percentage of voters registered in each province.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
