Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE) confirmed on Thursday that it had not yet received any results from the local elections in the 65 municipalities and that the count, 24 hours after the close of voting, continues to be in the “intermediate phase”.
At a press conference in Maputo, STAE spokesperson Regina Matsinhe did not provide any deadline for the publication of the results of the municipal vote, which ended at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday.
“We still haven’t received [voting results] and we won’t receive them by the end of the day. The process is in the intermediate municipal count, at district level,” she said.
She explained that, on Wednesday night, a partial count was carried out at each polling station, which can have up to 800 voters, and the respective result sheets (editais) were mandatorily posted at the door.
This is followed by the intermediate municipal count, at district level, within three days of the vote, and then, within up to five days, the centralization of results by province.
Finally, the National Elections Commission has a period of up to 15 days after the vote to publish the final results.
The STAE spokesperson was also asked about suspicious cases in which members of polling stations were found in possession of pre-marked ballots.
“There is a whole process so that, if there is evidence of what is happening, without wanting to detract absolutely anything, these people can be incriminated,” the STAE spokesperson pointed out. “They were trained to play a role at the voting table, if there is malfeasance that puts the [electoral] process into question, logically these people [introducing or attempting to introduce pre-marked ballots] will be duly sanctioned. It can’t stay like this, of course, because we are talking about the electoral body and its image.”
Just over 4.8 million Mozambicans were eligible to vote in the country’s 65 municipalities.
“We can say that the vote was orderly and peaceful,” the STAE spokeswoman said.
Mozambican voters were asked to choose 65 new presidents of the municipal councils and elect members of the municipal assemblies, including for 12 new municipalities approved by the Council of Ministers in October 2022, in addition to the 53 municipalities already existing, making a total of 1,747 municipal assembly members to be elected.
Mozambique is starting a new electoral cycle which, in addition to the local elections, foresees general elections on October 9, 2024, to choose the country’s next president, a position for which the current head of state, Filipe Nyusi, can no longer constitutionally run.
More than 11,500 candidates from 11 political parties, three party coalitions and eight citizens’ groups competed in the local elections, with the CNE having established 1,486 polling stations and 6,875 polling ‘tables’.
In the 2018 local elections, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo, in power) won in 44 of the 53 local councils and the opposition in just nine, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) in eight and the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) in one.
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