The official national count was yesterday (Saturday 26 October) and this was the only session open to observers and party mandatários (agents). It was not actually a count, and simply consisted of showing the slides which would be shown to the public today. The slides and totals had been agreed at a closed meeting Friday.
The opening of the meeting yesterday began with an intervention by six party mandatários, led by Venancio Mondlane of Renamo, saying that under the law agents and observers must be admitted to the count. The mandatários argued that there had been widespread misconduct which affected them and was not being discussed at the Saturday meeting because it had already been voted on in the closed Friday meeting. They said they should have been able to attend the Friday meeting, where it appears the count actually took place.
They also argued that they had only been notified of the Saturday meeting by telephone, when the law was changed earlier this year to require a written notification. The CNE imposed rigid restrictions on parties for submitting candidates, but was lax in obeying the law when notifying parties or handing out state money to parties, they said. The mandatários also objected to being handed a half metre high stack of documents when the arrived Saturday, which could not be read and digested in time for the official count.
After nearly eight hours of mostly closed debate, the CNE simply rejected the formal protest – adding that the fact that the mandatários were there showed that telephoning was adequate, even if illegal.
The meetings showed the very narrow interpretation of the word “count” (“apuramento”). Observers and mandatários were excluded from most of the discussion of the protest on the grounds that the protest is not part of the count, and therefore internal and not open. Similarly it said that the Friday meeting was just to “correct errors” in the data, approve documents and slides to be presented, and not actually a count. So the only “count” was looking at the slides at 11 pm last night.
Thus there is no public record of changes that the various elections commission made to the results. Were polling stations with more than 100% turnout deleted, and if so, which ones. What other “corrections” were made in the secret part of the meetings?
