Constitutional decision brings victory to Renamo in Quelimane

The Mozambican NGO CIP said this Friday that the decision of the Constitutional Council upholding Renamo’s appeal in the municipality of Quelimane, the capital of Zambezia, “will bring victory” to Mozambique’s largest opposition party.

“Renamo has proven that the ballot boxes were stuffed in Quelimane in accordance with the decision of the Constitutional Council (CC) published on Tuesday,” the non-governmental organization (NGO) Center for Public Integrity (CIP) said in a statement. which oversaw the sixth local elections on October 11 and the counting process throughout the country.

“This means that the Central Committee will accept this evidence when analyzing the final results of the October 11 elections, which were presented by the National Electoral Commission (NEC). stations (tables) using real announcements turn the current Frelimo victory with 3509 votes into a Renamo victory with 1675,” explains CIP.

If confirmed, this would be the first time an election result declared by the CNE has been overturned.

The mayor of Quelimane, Manuel de Araujo (Renamo), who has been out of the country in recent days, was received with apotheosis in the municipality on Thursday afternoon after the decision of the Constitutional Court became known, with thousands of people heading to the local airport.

The Constitutional Council supported the appeal of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, the largest opposition party), which challenged the local vote count in Quelimane, where the MNU gave victory to the Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo) with 49.43% to 46.62. % for Renamo.

Renamo, which currently governs the municipality of Quelimane, capital of the province of Zambezia, in this appeal, among other things, asked to “intimidate” the PNC so that “in the context of the centralization of the general tabulation of the results of the elections of October 11”, take into account “the votes declared for 39 tables”.

“Taking into account the above, the judges of this Constitutional Council decide (…) to partially satisfy the filed appeal on a petition with reference to the 39th protocol and notifications,” says the resolution of the Constitutional Council dated October 31, the body that resolves election disputes in the last authorities.

“In 12 of them, the falsification of results is especially obvious. Renamo presented the district results table (CDE) with the results from all 180 polling stations. And on 15 of them there is a curious blank space for the number of votes,” CIP also notes.

In the ruling, the Constitutional Council states that, in the context of the general vote count, the CNE “has decided by consensus to process the relevant notifications and protocols without prejudice to their cross-checking as part of the proper process for validating the elections.”

Renamo claims that thanks to a parallel vote count using notifications and polling station records, it won the elections in the municipality of Quelimane, one of the eight municipalities it controls in Mozambique. However, in announcing the election results on October 26, the CNE announced that the ruling Frelimo party won in 64 of the 65 municipalities that took part in the vote, while the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) won in the municipality of Beira.

Mozambique’s sixth local elections are coming under heavy criticism from various opposition parties and civil society, who are decrying “mega-rigging” of ballot papers, emphasizing fraudulent notifications, and some district court decisions admitting irregularities in the ballot papers. process.

The main opposition party is holding marches to challenge the October 11 election results, uniting thousands of people across the country to demand the “restoration of electoral truth.”