First very quick election update

Wednesday was the big day here in Mozambique: national elections. After last year's municipal elections, yesterday was the day to vote for a new president, as well as members of the Assembleia da Republica and provincial assemblies. Following a year and half of political unrest that finally cooled with the signing of a new Peace Deal between the ruling FRELIMO party and the main opposition party RENAMO, no one knew how the elections would go.

And it is still hard to say. It appears that although the days leading up to the election were calmer than the final days of last year's campaign, the election itself had more incidents. All online sources that tracked information supplied by citizens reported numerous instances of attempted fraud, problems encountered by election observers and officials coming from opposition parties, some violence and irregularities in the lists of registered voters. From J. Hanlon's election news bulletin:

There are a growing number of reports of the discovery of ballot papers already marked for Frelimo and which involve polling station staff or other officials.

In Angonia, Tete, Jeremias Atanasio, the president of a polling station in Domue primary school, was arrested when he was found with ballot papers already marked for Frelimo.

In Chidenguele, Gaza, observers caught a new form of ballot box stuffing. They saw a member of an unknown observer group pick up ballot papers from the main table (with the obvious agreement of the polling station staff), and put them into a slot under the booth where voters mark their ballot paper. When an observer went there and took out the ballot papers, he found them marked for Frelimo (see photos in the attached pdf). The idea appears to be that when a Frelimo member who had been warned in advance went to that booth and marked and folded up their ballot papers, they would take extra ballot papers from the slot and fold in extra ones as well, thus putting more than one ballot paper in each box.

In Beira spare ballot boxes have been found.

Meanwhile, there have been several other reports of pre-marked ballot papers being found. In Dondo a reporter for the newspaper Zambeze was attacked and had his camera confiscated after he took pictures showing polling station staff marking ballot papers for Frelimo, and of a teacher putting the extra votes in the ballot boxes. He also filmed a discussion between polling station staff and party members, but has now had his pictures taken away. This was at Eduardo Mondlane primary school.

In Coalane in Quelimane an observer caught a person with 17 pre-marked ballot papers.

And the Youth Parliament (Parlamento Juvenil, PJ), community radios (o Forum das Radios Comunitarias de Mocambique, FORCOM), the Human Rights League (a Liga Mocambicana dos Direitos Humanos, LDH), the Women's Forum (o Forum Mulher) and the Public Integrity Centre (o Centro de Integridade Publica, CIP) have issued a joint statement in which they say that that "in Quelimane city 4 clandestine ballot boxes were found in a police car registration PRM 00313. Local people say that the ballot boxes were given to two people who left in cars with registrations ACU 173 MC e ADJ 481 MC".

Based on supporters during the campaign and initial results, it appears that RENAMO made a better showing than some expected and MDM, the newer, up-and-coming opposition party that saw a fair amount of success in last year's mayoral elections, may have struggled. It will be very interesting to see the official results and how people respond to them. As of this morning, RENAMO is not accepting the initial projections of a FRELIMO victory.

Many are seeing a FRELIMO victory as a foregone conclusion, but people are also upset about the widespread fraud. The fraud appears in so many different flavors, beyond the ballot box stuffing cited above. O Partido can stack the polling station staff with party sympathizers, since they run the Election Commission. Supposedly, here in Chimoio, all of the voting table presidents were called in for a meeting with FRELIMO the night before elections. This is after the commission went against the recommendations of trainers for who to place as president, presumably in order to have their own people in charge. During the campaign, they repeatedly used state resources - from cars and trucks to police and military - to support their cause. Never mind the fact that they run all the major news outlets and could slant coverage to favor their own party. Even Mcel (Moçambique Celular the cell provider with government backing) was sending "news" items via text such as, "Nyusi's campaign is running strong!"or "MDM backers in Nampula leave campaign to back Nyusi." (Nyusi being the FRELIMO candidate).

On the other side, some men from RENAMO attacked a polling station and burned ballot boxes they believed to contain fraudulent ballots. There were reports of other violent acts perpetrated by RENAMO leading up to the election, too. Hear in Manica, I heard about MDM appointed polling staff being shut out of training sessions either because of terrible disorganization on the part of the party, or because their spots had been sold. No one came out of these elections looking squeaky clean.

My only hope is that any post-election conflicts are resolved peacefully and Mozambique is left in a better position to continue along its path to a better life for all citizens. I will continue to post quick updates as the news comes in.