Africa-Press – Mozambique. The candidate for mayor of Maputo from Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, Venancio Mondlane, on Tuesday accused the National Elections Commission (CNE) of sending forged polling station minutes and results sheets (“editais”) to the Constitutional Council, the country’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law.
Speaking at the latest Renamo march through the streets of Maputo, protesting against the preliminary results of the 11 October municipal elections, announced by the CNE, Mondlane, cited by the independent television station STV, said he will not accept results based on fake editais.
The Constitutional Council had asked the CNE to send it original editais from several municipalities – but the great majority of the documents sent to the Council are copy editais and copy polling station minutes. Nobody seems to know what happened to the originals.
“All the copy documents that the CNE sent to the Constitutional Council are false”, claimed Mondlane.
“Are we going to accept a result based on fake editais and fake minutes?”, he asked – to which the crowd roared “No!”
Mondlane’s claims are largely based on a careful examination of the correspondence between the Constitutional Council and the CNE, undertaken by the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP).
CIP found that, since 30 October, the Council has been asked the CNE to send it original editais. But the majority on the CNE, consisting of supporters of the ruling Frelimo Party, did not reveal these requests to those CNE members appointed by the opposition parties (Renamo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement, MDM).
According to the latest issue of the CIP bulletin on the municipal elections, “For two weeks, the Frelimo members on the CNE, without the knowledge of the opposition representatives on the same body, sent the editais and minutes requested by the Constitutional Council. The requests were received by the deputy chairperson of the CNE, Carlos Cauio, representing Frelimo, and he did not share them with the other Deputy Chairperson, Fernando Mazanga, of Renamo”.
The Renamo-appointed members did not discover that the corrrespondence had been hidden from them until 15 November, and the fourth request from the Constitutional Council.
The following day, the Renamo representatives on the CNE sent a letter to the Council, saying they had been taken by surprise by the correspondence between the CNE and the Council.
They urged the Council to consider the documents sent by the CNE, without their knowledge, as “forgeries, fakes and with no legal effect”, because “they were dealt with outside of the legal functioning of the National Elections Commission”. “We don’t recognise these documents”, they added, “since they bear signs of electoral fraud by the CNE”.
They asked the chairperson of the Constitutional Council, Lucia Ribeiro, to regard the minutes and editais sent by the CNE, without their knowledge, as “inadmissible and illegal”.
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