Africa-Press – Mozambique. The District Elections Commission in the southern Mozambican city of Matola on Saturday morning announced the “intermediate count” of the results from Wednesday’s municipal elections.
Sharply contradicting the claim made by the main opposition party, Renamo, the previous day, the District Commission said that the ruling Frelimo Party had won a substantial victory.
Just over 65 per cent of the 646,137 registered voters in Matola had cast their votes at the 895 polling stations in the city. There was thus an abstention rate of around 35 per cent.
421,138 votes were cast, of which an alarmingly high 4.39 per cent were invalid.
Of the 399,514 valid votes, Frelimo won 207,269 (57.23 per cent), followed by Renamo with 139,693 (36.08 per cent). The second opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), took 3,204 votes (3.65 per cent).
These figures bear little relation to those claimed by Renamo, which said that its parallel count of the results gave it 53 per cent of the valid votes, while Frelimo only won 36 per cent.
Renamo says its claim is based on the results sheets (“editais”) issued by each of the polling stations.
The only way this claim can be tested is for Renamo to produce the editais in its possession, and compare them with the editais used by the District Commission.
They should be the same, and only a careful comparison will show which of them is fake.
Intermediate results were also announced from the western city of Tete. Here the Tete district commission claimed that Frelimo had won 56,014 votes (68.9 per cent), Renamo 21,812 (26.85 per cent), and the MDM 2,722 (3.65 per cent).
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