MOZAMBIQUE'S CONSTITUTIONAL COUNCIL: Gives Appeal Judgement Against October 10, 2018 Partial Mun
- Linda EYONG Suzy
- Nov 3, 2018
- 3 min read
Most African countries today are very popular in their undemocratic practices, as those heading institutions are often appointed by the president who often controls the 3 arms of government. In fact, it is easier in Africa to easily believe that a mountain has moved than to believe that an appointee has taken any democratic measure against his boss (the president) who appointed him. This is the reason why the recent Mozambique's Constitutional Council appeal case ruling against the government (in favour of the main opposition party, Mozambican National Resistance, Renamo) is making news headlines.
For the first time, Mozambique’s main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, has won, in part, an appeal against the results of the 10 October municipal elections.
In the western city of Tete, Renamo had complained to the City Court that, in announcing the results, the Tete Elections Commission had left out 2,205 votes. It backed up its claims with copies of the results sheets from what it said were 184 Tete polling stations, and compared the Commission’s count of the result with its own, parallel count.
The court did not question Renamo’s arithmetic, but threw out the appeal on the grounds that the votes in question were not enough to substantially change the results. Renamo then appealed to the Constitutional Council, Mozambique’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law.
The Council disagreed with the Tete court that votes could be discarded simply because there were not enough of them to alter the final results. It believed that the votes should be counted correctly.
So the Council went through the results sheets presented by Renamo, one by one, finding that there were 180 of them and not the 184 claimed by Renamo.But Renamo was right that the votes had been undercounted. By the Council’s calculations, 852 Renamo votes had disappeared. The count given by the Tete Elections Commission was 32,580 votes and that by the Council was 33,432. Add 145 votes declared invalid at the polling stations, but which the Commission judged were votes intended for Renamo, and the Renamo total comes to 33,577.
The Council found Renamo’s request for all the votes to be counted correctly was perfectly reasonable, and ordered that the missing 852 votes be added to the Renamo total.
This does not change the fact that the ruling Frelimo Party won in Tete, and that the head of its list, Cesar de Carvalho, will become mayor of Tete. But it does force a recalculation of the distribution of seats in the Tete Municipal Assembly, and it is possible that Renamo could win an extra seat at the expense of Frelimo.
Though some have criticized that the Constitutional Council gave the correct ruling in favour of the opposition party simply because they new that it had no impact on the final results in the municipality, many see it as a blow to the country's electoral system and a good move to africans.
Recently in Cameroun, the country's Constitutional Council, following similar complaints from most of the opposition party leaders, has publicly twisted the law before genuine evidences from the complainants, all in favour of president Paul Biya who appointed them. In fact the supposed president elect of the country's October 7, 2018 presidential elections, Professor Maurice KAMTO, had presented to the council, genuine "Proces Verbaux" (PVs) from pooling stations of the country's most populated areas, which were in his favour, but the court simply tagged them fake. To counter KAMTO's PVs, the Council rather presented PVs which KAMTO's lawyers tagged as cooked up PVs in favour of their boss because pages with results were not traditionally signed.
In view of this, many have seen the Mozambique's Council move as a democratic one.
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Source: Club of Mozambique.
Linda EYONG Suzy | Restorationist | Founder and CEO Voice of Ambazonia
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