Mozambique poll 'plagued with sloppiness and misconduct'
2014 National Elections
* Joe Hanlon discusses the municipal election results in Mozambique:
Comment 1
All parties share
in the sloppiness
After watching this election in details, with correspondents across the country, we believe STAE should be ashamed. There could have been no surprises and there is no reason not to have a smoothly running election machine. What was STAE doing in the four years between 2009 and 2013, when it should have been preparing for municipal and national elections? After four elections, we think that STAE can on longer simply blame "our insufficiencies".
But the parties share the blame. The is also the fifth national election for Renamo. Afonso Dhlakama claims he won then all, but after 20 years he still does not have an electoral team that can monitor polling stations and STAE, and provide evidence for his claims. In the agreement with the government earlier this year, Renamo was given whatever changes to the electoral law it wanted. It created the system of having a Renamo-nominated MMV in every polling station and it created the system whereby electoral offences are dealt with by district courts. And to encourage them to act quickly, protests must be submitted to district courts within 48 hours. But Renamo was not organised enough to use a system it created. Now Renamo claims that polling stations refused to accept protests, which is now a crime - but where were the Renamo MMVs and delegates, and why did none of them immediately make a complaint to the district court?
Similarly, MDM has known since 2009 that it would have to have more than 15,000 people in polling stations, yet it was still recruiting days before the election, even in Maputo city where it should have been reasonably well organised.
For this election, MDM and Renamo had people in all STAEs and all election commissions. What were those people doing to prevent the sloppiness and misconduct? When Nampula provincial STAE was failing to issue observer credentials, what were the MDM and Renamo nominees doing to correct the problem? The whole reason MDM and Renamo demanded people in the electoral machine was to watch for misconduct and poor performance, yet they did not do their job.
The blame for the sloppiness in this election must be shared between STAE and the opposition parties. It is not acceptable for the opposition parties to say "We were given everything we asked for, but we were not able to make use of it, so it is all the fault of STAE."
STAE and the opposition parties have equal share in the mess.
It is easy to blame Frelimo, as the dominant party, and as we note below, Frelimo does have its own share in the mess. But in democratic electoral systems, it for the opposition to win elections. Alternation of parties in government does not happen automatically; the voters must choose it. The governing party always has an advantage, but eventually it always loses. However, the opposition must be well enough organised to convince a large majority of voters and then to have enough people watching and participating to prevent fraud, misconduct and sloppiness.
If the opposition is prepared to accept its share of responsibility, the next step would be for election officials, political parties and civil society to sit down and discuss how an electoral administration could be created which could be made to work in Mozambican conditions. This is not just about changes in the law, but also about administrative practice and motivating election officials and party activists to spend the next four years preparing for a better run election. jh & tr
Comment 2
Intentional
disorganisation?
Hopefully most civil servants vote in elections. And many people in the state administration are loyal to Frelimo for good reasons - for example they feel they received an education because of independence, and they have seen an expansion of health and education which they credit to Frelimo. Some go a bit too far to support the party, by giving preference to party members for jobs or for money as part of the "7 million".
But some feel under some pressure - they receive telephone calls saying that land should be given to person X or a contract to person Y. School teachers who stood for MDM have been transferred, and promotions have been denied to people without a party card. It may not be official policy, but some people feel that their advancement in the civil service and in the party will be enhanced if they do things to hurt the opposition and help Frelimo. As a consequence, there is fear in some places of being seen as an opposition party delegate in a polling station or an opposition campaigner. During Armando Guebuza's second term as president, complaints about this increased.
During the electoral process, a certain degree of disorganisation was noted. There were not enough people assigned to issue observer and party delegate credentials in Nampula, Maputo city, and elsewhere. For the first time, the district counts were open, and we now know why STAE was anxious to keep them secret - there are no systems and no national instructions as to how the count should be done. Each district did it differently, and there was often such confusion that it was impossible for observers and journalists to actually follow what was happening.
As we know from Gurue in the local elections last year, it is not difficult to use the confusion of the district count to put false results sheets (editais) into the system.
Lack of staff is a perfect excuse to delay the issuing of credentials for people who might catch misconduct.
Could some of the disorganisation be intentional? Could it be that some people working for STAE see that it if the systems are confused, unclear, and under-staffed, then it is easier to commit fraud and makes changes to the results?
Are we seeing simple disorganisation and laziness, or are we seeing intentional disorganisation? jh
Comment 3
Making Renamo look
more dangerous
Two very unusual Frelimo dis-information campaigns last week were both aimed at making Renamo look dangerous and at creating fear. On Thursday when the election results were to be announced, Frelimo used social media and other means to urge ministries to close early and people to go home early because, it was claimed, Renamo planned violence to counter the announcement. Ministries and offices closed. There was no violence, but the dis-information campaign did create fear.
On the day before, Radio Mocambique and TVM reported that the US ambassador Douglas Griffiths had met Tuesday with the two opposition leaders, Afonso Dhlakama and Daviz Simango, to urge them to not to accept the outcome of the elections. The US embassy called the report "absurd". It confirmed Griffiths and visiting US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Shannon Smith had met all three candidates, and said they had used the now standard diplomatic formulation that all parties should use the existing legal mechanisms to raise their concerns.
The report was absurd for two reasons. First, no current ambassador would tell a Mozambican party to reject an election. But more importantly, the mood in the embassies has changed in the past decade, reflecting the priority given to business as well as more conservative governments at home. Despite antagonisms with the government over the Ematum bond issue and corruption, the current Frelimo government is seen by embassies as one they "do business" with. They do not want an opposition government with which all contracts would have to be re-negotiated, and they do not want a weak unity or technocratic government that cannot take decisions. Even the US wants the status quo.
So why is part of Frelimo trying to whip up fear around Renamo? One possibility is that a hard-line group within Frelimo wants to prevent concessions to Dhlakama, and is intervening at the start of negotiations between Dhlakama and newly election President Filipe Nyusi. jh
* Mozambique political process bulletin web: bit.ly/NatElec To subscribe: http://tinyurl.com/sub-moz
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