Mozambique's president Armando Guebuza was re-elected on 28 October 2009 with a record vote of nearly three million, while the opposition fell below one million votes for the first time. Frelimo won 191 of 250 parliamentary seats, its highest total in four multi-party elections.1 Turnout was 45%, similar to 2004, but much lower than 1994 and 1999. The election however was tainted by misconduct, unfairness, and secrecy that brought sharp criticism from both domestic and international observers2, and was similar to criticisms made about previous elections. Frelimo's landslide meant that the improper actions were totally unnecessary.
| Valid votes | Percentage of valid votes | |
|---|---|---|
| Daviz Simango | 340,579 | 8.59 |
| Armando Guebuza | 2 974,627 | 75.01 |
| Afonso Dhlakama | 650,679 | 16.41 |
| Source: National Elections Commission (CNE). |
| 1994 | 1999 | 2004 | 2009 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frelimo | 129 | 133 | 160 | 191 |
| Renamo | 112 | 117 | 90 | 51 |
| Other | 9 | 8 | ||
| Source: National Elections Commission (CNE). |
Afonso Dhlakama, guerrilla leader of Renamo in the 1980s and presidential candidate in all four elections, fell from his peak vote of 2.1 million in 1999 to only 650,000 votes this year. Dhlakama retains very tight control over Renamo, and party organisation has collapsed almost completely. He has expelled or marginalised anyone who showed organisational competence or electoral popularity, apparently out of fear of challengers. This led to an important newcomer to the national political scene, Daviz Simango and his Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM, Movimento Democrático de Moçambique).
In 2003 local elections, for the first time ever, Renamo mayors were elected in five of 33 municipalities, including the important port cities of Beira and Nacala. Daviz Simango won high praise in his tenure as mayor of Beira, and it was assumed that he would stand again. But at the last minute, Dhlakama chose someone else. Outraged supporters of the popular mayor put together an independent candidature in less than a week. Daviz3 won with 62% of the vote (on a high 57% turnout), compared to 34% for the Frelimo candidate and a derisory 3% for the official Renamo candidate. Expelled from Renamo for standing as an independent, Daviz and his supporters formed the MDM, which attracted some of the more articulate people remaining in Renamo. As a presidential candidate, Daviz gained nearly 9% of the vote – much less than he had hoped for, but more than any third-party presidential candidate and considered a good basis for a party that had fewer than six months to organise. Daviz did not have time to establish a national presence, and his votes seem largely to have been taken from Renamo. In his home province of Sofala (which includes Beira) he won 25%, and exceptionally in Maputo city he won 15%. The MDM will have eight seats in parliament, and three of those were won in Maputo city; one was taken from Renamo but two were taken from Frelimo. This points to Daviz's potential appeal to younger, urban voters.
Frelimo's overwhelming victory on a relatively low turnout of 45% points both to continued support for Frelimo and to Renamo's collapse, which in turn is due to lack of organisation and its failure to present itself as a credible alternative government. In 2008 local elections4, Renamo lost all its mayoral posts, in part because it provided no support to local candidates, who had to run their own campaigns. In Nacala the incumbent did well enough to force a second round, only to lose in the re-run; with proper national support, he probably could have won. In the national election a year later, at a press conference on 3 November 2009, Renamo distributed an internal Frelimo campaign document, to demonstrate improper conduct. The paper was similar to instructions handed out by any well-organised party, calling for canvassers to ensure that known supporters actually voted, that polling station agents were correctly trained, and so on. For Renamo, however, good organisation was seen as blatantly unfair.
Secret and unfair
Domestic and international observers praise the actual organisation of polling day, and the structure of voting and counting is particularly open. Each polling station has a single register book of up to 1000 voters and operates independently; when polls close, the polling station staff immediately count the votes in the presence of party delegates, observers, and press. The results are posted on the polling station door, which makes good parallel counts possible. This year there were two parallel counts: the Electoral Observatory, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) coalition, did a statistically valid 7% sample count, while the state-owned Radio Mozambique spent the entire day after voting simply reading off all the results they could get to. Both produced good projections within 18 hours of polls closing. This both prevents any significant manipulation of the results and gives early indicators of problems. Since 1999, however, observers have criticised the secrecy of the subsequent tabulation process, and in particular the unique aspect of electoral law which allows the National Elections Commission (CNE) to change the results, in secret, without saying what changes are made, and without explanation. Secrecy extends to other issues as well; a full list of candidates and a complete list of polling stations were never published.
Ballot box stuffing and spoiling of opposition ballot papers also appeared to be worse in this election, taking place in an estimated 6% of polling stations. There was significant ballot box stuffing, with turnouts of 100% or more (and nearly everyone voting for Frelimo) in at least 2% of polling stations, particularly in Tete, Gaza, and Niassa provinces. Even the CNE accepted that there were problems, and excluded 104,000 votes (including one-sixth of all those in Tete province). This was done in secret, without any statement or explanation, and was only detected by journalists comparing the results announced by the CNE with those announced by provincial election commissions. Similarly, in at least 3% of polling stations, staff were invalidating votes for the opposition, largely by putting an ink fingerprint on the ballot paper to make it look as though the voter had improperly put marks for two candidates. At least 40,000 votes for the opposition were spoiled in this way; fingerprints should provide obvious evidence, but rather than trying to pursue the perpetrators, the CNE destroyed the evidence. A study of the 2004 Mozambican election carried out by the London School of Economics Crisis States Research Centre reported that: ‘The evidence presented favours the conclusion that ballot-box stuffing, improper ballot nullification and organisational failure did indeed take place on a large scale’ (Hanlon and Fox 2006).
In this election, the CNE came under heavy criticism from the European Union, Commonwealth and Electoral Observatory for a combination of secrecy, incompetence, and unfairness. The issues came together when a law was passed in April 2009 which required every candidate to present five documents, instead of two as required under the prior law. Officials delayed giving these documents to some opposition candidates. Despite ample time to plan, on 29 July, the final day for submission of candidates’ documents, the CNE was genuinely surprised to receive boxes containing more than 5,000 files, each with five documents. No system had been organised to receive the documents and, as required by law, give receipts for what was submitted. No system had been created to check the submissions, so parties often discovered that submissions were not accepted only when the CNE posted the approved lists, several days late, in early September. In the most controversial decision, MDM was only allowed to stand in four of 13 provinces. MDM appealed against the decision to the Constitutional Council, which ruled in favour of the CNE and against the MDM purely on the basis of a secret CNE document never seen by the MDM or press, and which is contradicted by public CNE documents and was later shown to have errors. Other CNE errors included mistakes in the declaration of final results, and at least two parties listed as standing in the wrong place. One small party, the PDD (Partido para a paz, Democracia e Desenvolvimento – Party for peace, Democracy and Development), was put on the ballot paper for the provincial assembly in a Zambézia district, even though it had not submitted a candidates’ list, and won enough votes to gain a seat.
A smell of unfairness hangs over the process. ‘There is a general lack of trust in the independence of the CNE, due in particular to insufficient measures to improve transparency’, comments a European Union observer mission report. ‘The work of the National Elections Commission, as a public institution, must be public. It is the only way to ensure confidence’, said Mark Stevens of the Commonwealth observer team. But Frelimo and the CNE do not agree.
Why?
When Frelimo has won such large victories in 2003, 2004, 2008, and now in 2009, why does it continue with an electoral system which draws such international criticism? The election results show that Mozambicans again placed their confidence in Frelimo, and show that ‘the Mozambican people demonstrated a high level of political maturity’, said the Frelimo Secretary for Mobilisation and Propaganda, Edson Macuácua.
In 1999 however, the voters did not show such a high level of maturity, and the vote was very close. Officially, Joaquim Chissano beat Afonso Dhlakama by 204,678 votes, but, curiously, 240,800 more people voted for president than voted for parliament. In Nampula, 80,461 extra people voted for president (Secretariado Técnico de Administração Eleitoral, 2001), nearly one in ten of all voters, yet no observer in Nampula ever mentioned a voter putting a ballot paper in the box for president but not putting one in the box for parliament. In Namapa district of Nampula, one-third of voters did not vote for parliament, but no one noticed. Where did the extra votes come from? Former US president Jimmy Carter headed the Carter Center team monitoring the 2004 election, and he publicly questioned the results of the 1999 election (Mozambique Political Process Bulletin 2004).
All that can be said for certain is that the 1999 result was much closer than the official 4.6% of the vote. This was traumatic for Frelimo, and thus some in the party may feel the need to keep additional tools in reserve, in case in future elections voters do not show the same level of maturity and support.