The full bulletin in pdf is on https://bit.ly/Moz-El-313
Record low turnout with boycott in north
Turnout in this election matched the lowest ever for a national election, 43%. There was an effective boycott in the north with only 28% voting in Nampula and 33% in Zambézia, Niassa, and Cabo Delgado. In the centre turnout was around 50% and in Maputo city and province 63%. The previous lowest turnouts were 45% in 2009 and 43% in 2004.
This is the official turnout, which will be somewhat higher than the real turnout because it includes widespread ballot box stuffing, as reported by observers, plus ghost voters. We estimate the real turnout is probably 39% or less.
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Podemos will be the official opposition
Support for Renamo and its head Ossufu Momade collapsed, and will have only 20 seats in parliament. Podemos is now the largest opposition party in parliament. 31 seats There could be slight changes when final results are published for Tete and Sofala.
.Frelimo has more than a 2/3 majority, but many of Frelimo’s votes came from ballot box stuffing and the nearly 1 million ghost voters – in places where there are more voters than voting age adults.
Both the National Elections Commission and the Constitutional Council are allowed to change the results in secret, and without explanation, so these numbers could still change.
There are 2 seats in parliament elected by Mozambicans living and registered abroad, and those results have not been announced yet, but they usually vote for Frelimo.
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Fraud was done openly, observers report
Fraud was so brazen that it was carried out in full view of observers, the civil society observer group Mais Integridade reported this morning (16 October). Ballot box stuffing, long delays to start the counting, and invalidating opposition votes were done openly. And where staff wanted to hide their actions, observers and party delegates were thrown out of the polling stations. https://bit.ly/Moz-El-MI
The revised electoral law allows staff an hour break between voting and counting, but many polling stations did not start the count for 4 hours or more. “The main reason for the violation of this legal provision is related to the fact that Presiding Officers were instructed by the local STAE not to start tabulation before receiving authorisation to start counting,” Mais Integridade reported. This was largely to delay the writing up of results sheet until the early morning, when results could be changed and sleeping party delegates would not notice.
Mais Integriade noted ballot box stuffing but also during the count seeing invalid or Mondlane votes given to Frelimo; this also happened with the ticks on the blackboard used to keep count. And in a number of polling stations staff were caught invalidating votes for Podemos or Renamo by adding an extra ink mark. And observers and even polling station presidents used their right to a “special vote” to vote more than once.
Mais Integridade also did analysis of the results, finding 12 of 110 districts with very high turnout (over 80%) and a very high vote for Frelimo’s Daniel Chapo (over 80%). Finally there were unexplained differences between the number voting for president and parliament, in two cases of 55,000 votes. Yet no one reported seeing someone put a vote in one ballot box and not the other. Instead, one ballot box was stuffed and not the other.
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Ballot bags torn open in Mandimba
A video made by opposition delegates shows a group of MMVs found in the act of tampering with plastic bags containing ballots in one of the local warehouses. Sorted ballots go into separate bags which are sealed and only opened if there is a recount. One of the violators of the plastic bags says that the bags were already opened before arriving at the warehouse. One of the tampered bags is from EPC Mississippi, belonging to table number 110425-03 (see videos https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BT2roZU0JaPYUyMKV9t3EL-QnjsLd4XQ/view?usp=sharing and https://drive.google.com/file/d/18byQC28FE0Zg3xJxIxQtvCe4oaY9RMUH/view?usp=sharing).
The full bulletin in pdf is on https://bit.ly/Moz-El-313
