Mozambique’s ruling party, Frelimo, surged ahead last week in unofficial results from the country’s recent election, puzzling analysts who had expected a neck-and-neck finish with the opposition Renamo. At the same time, evidence of ballot-stuffing in some remote districts cast a shadow over the clean bill of health that international observers gave the elections.
Projections suggest that Frelimo’s presidential candidate, Armando Guebuza, will get 60% of the vote, as compared with 35% for Renamo’s Afonso Dhlakama, who in 1999 collected nearly 48% of the vote. These projections are based on results posted by individual polling stations and collected by Radio Mozambique correspondents around the country.
The sharp drop in Renamo support was accompanied by an equally dramatic fall in voter turnout, with numbers expected to be between three million and 3,5-million: less than half of the eligible voters. Turnout in the 1994 and 1999 general elections was 5,4-million and 4,9-million respectively.
Analysts agreed that abstention had been highest among Renamo’s traditional supporters in the largely agricultural centre and north of the country, who felt that the government had let them down, and the opposition had failed to provide a viable alternative.
”People chose to stay in the fields — voting doesn’t fill the belly,” said independent journalist Marcelo Mosse.
”In the cities, the absence might have been a criticism not only of [outgoing president Joaquim] Chissano, but also of Guebuza — he is not someone who inspires support.”
The political weekly Savana described the low turnout as ”a red card to the political class”, which it accused of being out of touch with voters’ interests.
Reports of irregularities were concentrated in Tete province in western Mozambique.
”In Tete there was clearly fraud, though not enough to affect the final result,” said LuÃÂs de Brito of the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (Eisa).
He said two voting stations in the province’s Changara district had reported turnout of close to 100%, with most of these votes going to Frelimo. De Brito said the high turnout for the province as a whole gave reason for suspicion.
”In Tete, we have an average of 400 voters turning out at each voting table, compared with fewer than 300 per table in all the other provinces.”
De Brito said Renamo activists had been forced to leave certain areas of Tete province early in the election campaign, which had prevented them from sending monitors to polling in those areas. Elsewhere in the country, the presence of party representatives during voting and counting was hailed as Mozambique’s best safeguards against fraud.
The Mozambican Political Process Bulletin — an independent newsletter with a wide network of correspondents — also cited evidence of ballot-stuffing in Tsangano district of Tete province, as well as in Chicono in northern Niassa province. In the latter, 996 out of 1 000 voters registered at one station appeared to have voted, with Guebuza gaining more than 900 of the votes.
Such reports contradicted the positive assessment of international observation teams, who praised Mozambique’s strong legal framework for elections, the professionalism of polling station staff, and balanced coverage both in state and private media. Asked why the international teams had not picked up the incidents of fraud cited by Eisa, De Brito said these incidents had occurred mostly at remote and inaccessible polling stations.
The international teams, including Southern African Development Community parliamentarians and representatives of the Commonwealth, the Carter Center and the European Union, were however concerned at the low electoral turnout. Several of the observer teams also mentioned the mistrust that had been created by the party-political structure of the National Electoral Commission, where Frelimo is able to force through decisions by majority vote.