Good afternoon. We return briefly to the issue of the municipal elections today, as the National Elections Commission (CNE) scrambles to gather the evidence required by the Constitutional Council (CC) which will make the final decision on whether or not to confirm the results.
As pointed out by the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin, the CNE’s reaction to the CC’s request for evidence demonstrates that it did not initially receive the results sheets (editais) from its district branches (CDEs), something which the Bulletin says is illegal.
Legal or not, the situation clearly demonstrates a CNE not doing its job, but rather passing the buck to the CC to deal with the widespread and credible accusations of fraud. The CNE simply passed on the CDEs’ results to the CC, without first conducting its own checks on those results’ credibility — a serious dereliction of duty.
It could create a serious problem, since the CC has also had a tendency, historically, to claim that its hands are tied by what happened lower down in the chain.
