In secret, the Constitutional Council (CC) will next week analyse "discrepancies" in the election results published by the National Elections Commission (CNE), CC chair Lúcia Ribeiro said Thursday (12 December). She stressed that the ÇC is not recounting votes but is comparing documents - polling station results sheets (editais) and minutes plus district and provincial tabulation records. Signed and stamped official copies of editais which are given to parties, observers and journalists will also be considered. She has not explained how discrepancies can be explained without a recount. But she did say that the CC now has a team of 57 people, including seven judges and technicians, who are digitising documents.
Ribeiro and the CC did have an open meeting with the president of the opposition Podemos party, Albino Forquilha, on Wednesday (11 December https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1KpJUgka8d/). And in statements Wednesday and Thursday Ribeiro tried to explain two key complaints - long delays and secrecy.
She argues that both come from the unusual structure of Mozambican elections. Mozambique first validates results and them proclaims, while most democracies use the opposite order, declaring the results in a day or two and these can then be challenged in the courts. In Mozambique, she argues, the Constitutional Council is the supreme electoral court which must both validate and proclaim the results. The CC is the highest electoral court, so there can be no further appeals.
Ribeiro notes that the law allows some transparency in the electoral process. But the electoral process ends with the CNE, she claims. The CC is a judicial body, not an electoral one. "There is no election observation in a judicial body”, she argued (cited in Carta de Moçambique.)
But lawyers say she is wrong. The CC validation and proclamation follows electoral procedures down to the requirement that the CC must post its decision on its headquarters door, just as polling stations and CNE editais must be posted. Furthermore observers are given the right to observe operations at all levels, explicitly including "the validation and proclamation of the electoral results" - which is done by the CC. (Law 2/2019 of 31 May, art 127 and art 263 1. c) This was pointed out in a CIPCAST by José Caldeira. https://youtu.be/xNxCZPRKPgg
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The CNE published its widely challenged results on 24 October, 15 days after the 9 October election. If the CC announces its results on 23 December as expected, that will be 76 days after the election and 61 days after the CNE handed its results over to the CC.
