Mozambique’s National Elections Commission (CNE) on Thursday announced that former defence minister Filipe Nyusi, the candidate of the ruling Frelimo Party, has won the presidential election held on October 15 with 2.78 million votes (57 percent).
In second position was Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the former rebel movement Renamo, with 1.78 million votes (36.6 percent), while the third candidate Daviz Simango, the mayor of Beira and leader of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), took 310 000 votes (6.4 percent).
In the parliamentary election, Frelimo won a comfortable majority and will hold 144 seats in the new parliament to 89 for Renamo and 17 for the MDM.
These results come after a lengthy process of tabulating votes at district and provincial level, and painstakingly inspecting every one of the three quarters of a million votes declared invalid at the polling stations.
About a quarter of these votes were rescued and attributed to the various candidates and parties.
While Frelimo has won a comfortable victory, it is a far cry from the 75 percent of the vote it took in the previous elections in 2009. Frelimo has lost its two-thirds majority in parliament, and so cannot pass amendments to the constitution on its own.
Comparison
Renamo ought to be pleased with the results. Dhlakama’s share of the vote has more than doubled in comparison with the 2009 election, and Renamo’s parliamentary representation is set to rise from 51 to 89.
The MDM’s parliamentary group will double in size, from eight to 17.
Nonetheless, both opposition parties have rejected the results. Renamo submitted a formal appeal against the results on Thursday, while in Beira Simango demanded that the elections be annulled.
Renamo claims to have done its own count which shows that Dhlakama won 80 percent of the vote, but it has not shown reporters how it reached a figure which is so divergent, not only from the official results, but also from the parallel count undertaken by the electoral Observatory, the largest and most credible group of Mozambican election observers.
The results from the parallel count are broadly in line with those from the CNE.
There were literally thousands of Renamo and MDM appointees on the election commissions at national, provincial, district and city levels and on the staff of the polling stations. Yet not one of them submitted a written complaint about what the two parties now say was systematic and generalised fraud on polling day.
Appeals against irregularities or fraud at polling stations go to the district courts. But Supreme court spokesman, Pedro Nhatitima, told reporters on Thursday that between them Renamo and the MDM submitted only 23 appeals across the entire country.
These were all rejected, Nhatitima said, because they provided no evidence to support their allegations, or because they were submitted beyond the legal deadline of 48 hours after close of polls.
The results announced by the CNE are not final.
They still have to be validated and proclaimed by the Constitutional Council, the country’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law.
Daily News