Africa-Press – Mozambique. Renamo’s candidate for Maputo city council, Venâncio Mondlane, on Thursday announced a gathering of supporters at the delegation of the largest opposition party on Friday at the time of the proclamation of the election results by the Constitutional Council (CC).
The aim is to hear “the validation of Renamo’s victory in the city of Maputo”, said Venâncio Mondlane, at the end of another march through the Mozambican capital against the results announced by the National Electoral Commission (CNE), which gave victory to the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) in 64 of the 65 municipalities in the vote on 11 October.
After the final results are announced, Mondlane said, the “next steps” will be decided.
In Maputo, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) candidate insists that he won the elections, with 55% of the votes, based on the parallel count from the original polling station minutes and notices, but the CNE announced the victory of the Frelimo candidate, Razaque Manhique.
“In Maputo, based on the real minutes and notices, 98,000 votes were taken away from Renamo and given to Frelimo. It’s horrible,” Venâncio Mondlane criticised this week at another protest march, calling on the Constitutional Council to “fulfil its role”.
The streets of some Mozambican cities, including Maputo, have been taken over by consecutive opposition demonstrations dubbed “repudiation” of the “mega-fraud” in the process involving the 11 October local elections, which was also strongly criticised by civil society and non-governmental organisations, the target of several appeals to the Constitutional Council.
The president of Mozambique’s Constitutional Council, Counsellor Judge Lúcia Ribeiro, will proclaim the “final results” of the sixth local elections on Friday in Maputo, the institution announced today.
In a note sent to the Lusa news agency, the Constitutional Council, the last body to appeal the electoral process, said that the results would be proclaimed at 11:00 local time (09:00 in Lisbon) at the Mozambique-China Cultural Centre in Maputo.
The announcement of the proclamation of the final results comes after the CNE finalised on Wednesday morning the delivery of all the notices and tabulation minutes of the local elections requested by the CC.
“Everything has been delivered, in full,” announced CNE spokesman Paulo Cuinica on Wednesday, emphasising that it will be up to the Constitutional Council to “decide on the validity or otherwise of the notices” sent.
“If there are vitiated notices, the Constitutional Council will certainly find them,” he said.
The CNE spokesman explained that the Constitutional Council requested “the notices of the partial tabulation”, made at the polling station on the day of the vote, which “are always kept by the provincial commissions”.
“The CNE did the tabulation using the minutes and notices that they should use, which are from the intermediate tabulation that is done at the municipal level. These notices are sent to the CNE,” he said.
Cuinica insisted that the CNE was unaware of the existence of incorrect minutes and public notices but emphasised that the evaluation would be up to the Constitutional Council. “We have no information. We haven’t seen these tainted minutes. What was requested by the Constitutional Council was delivered. It will therefore be up to the Constitutional Council to verify the authenticity or otherwise of these documents. And we believe that the Constitutional Council will cross-check with other sources too, that not only the documents were delivered from the CNE. We are probably one of those who have been asked to submit documents.”
In addition to the CNE, the Constitutional Council has requested the minutes and notices from the parties competing in the sixth local elections, with Renamo and the MDM publicly announcing that they have already handed them over.
Renamo, the largest opposition party, which in the previous 53 municipalities (12 new municipalities were created this year) led in eight, was left without any municipalities, despite claiming victory in the country’s largest cities, based on the original minutes and notices of polling stations, having appealed to the CC, the last instance of appeal in the electoral process.
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