Mozambique’s general elections of 9 October 2024 were marred by irregularities, evidence of fraud and mistrust in the electoral authorities from start to finish, according to the final report of the European Union (EU)’s election observation mission to the country.
However, the report published on Thursday stopped short of endorsing or rejecting the election results, or asserting whether they were free and fair or not.
The official results, confirmed in December 2024 by the Constitutional Council, gave a clear victory to ruling party Frelimo and its presidential candidate Daniel Chapo in the presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections, although it took some parliamentary seats away from Frelimo and reduced the vote for Chapo from around 70% to around 65%. Despite this, opposition parties have roundly rejected the results, as has Venâncio Mondlane, the opposition presidential candidate who insists that he, and not Chapo, was elected president. Since the elections, over 300 people have died in related protests, mostly civilians shot dead by police.
After meeting President Chapo yesterday to formally hand over the report, the mission’s head, Laura Ballarín, a member of the European Parliament from Spain, said that Chapo had “confirmed his intention” to carry out reforms.
However, neither Chapo nor Frelimo have acknowledged the widespread and well-documented evidence of fraud and wrongdoing in the elections which brought him to power and confirmed Frelimo’s complete control of the national and provincial governments.
When the EU mission publicised the report on its page on Facebook yesterday, which the report says is the most popular social media platform in Mozambique, comments were switched off underneath many of the the posts announcing the report.
“Extreme lack of transparency”
The report noted that the irregularities around the election began with the excess registration of voters, which led to 650,000 more voters being registered than projected population figures would have forecast. This raised “serious concerns” among people concerned, it noted.
The electoral laws were subject to a “hasty revision” shortly before the elections, but, the report went on, “lack harmonisation, have created legal uncertainty and have not taken into account the [EU’s] recommendations [in a previous election observer mission’s report] of the 2019 elections.”
In general, election day went “peacefully”, the report said, but the counting and tabulation of results were marked by “anomalies” that negatively affected public confidence in the results of the process, the 30 January 2025 report added. The counting and tabulation process after polling day was marked by “serious errors and an extreme lack of transparency”, it went on.
EU election monitors noted that the vote-counting phase lacked transparency. In 17 polling stations, it noted ballot papers being declared invalid despite the “clear intention” of the voter. Also observed were cases of “irregular alteration” of election results, evidence of ballot box stuffing and cases of voters not being found in the electoral roll of their polling station.
At the tabulation stage, the mission says it found that the electoral administration failed to ensure a uniform data entry process, allowing officials to “deliberately or inadvertently” record results that did not correspond to the polling station results.
“There were several cases of manipulation of results at district level,” it highlighted, complaining about the fact that EU observers were once asked to leave the tabulation centre room after finding discrepancies between the results from the polling stations and the numbers counted.
The report also said that the mission’s requests for the authorities to publish election results broken down by polling station were refused, although they admitted that it was possible to do so.
The Constitutional Council recognised that irregularities had occurred during the electoral process, but said that they did not substantially influence the results of the elections, the report noted. However, the report also noted concerns raised about the legality of the way the council reviewed and changed the election results, and said the legal basis for its actions was “unclear”.
“Both the CNE [National Elections Commission] and the CC [Constitutional Council] failed to carry out adequate procedures that would have increased transparency and trust in the electoral results. The CNE claimed that it did not have the capacity to cross-check the veracity of polling sheets, while the CC acknowledged major irregularities but refused to carry out recounts,” the report said.
During the electoral campaign, the mission said it had observed a clear slant in conditions of competition in favour of Frelimo, and an unclear demarcation between party and state resources. Frelimo benefited from the advantages of its position of power through the misuse of state resources and was able to run a strong campaign in all the provinces, the report said.
Previous EU recommendations ignored
The report made 18 recommendations to improve the way elections are organised, managed and conducted in Mozambique, eight of which are priorities.
These include reviewing the structure, composition and selection process of the electoral administration, with a view to strengthening professionalism and impartiality in all phases of the electoral process; reviewing the results management system to ensure an efficient process; and including a rapid system for announcing provisional results progressively. It recommended strengthening the CNE to adopt measures to deal with the consequences of electoral offences and bad practices throughout the electoral process.
The report also recommended that the Constitutional Council better substantiate its announcement of the results, as well as enforcing the existing ban on the misuse of state resources.
Many of the 18 recommendations in the latest report had already been identified by the observation missions that observed previous elections, according to the report. After Mozambique’s last general elections in 2019, the EU observer mission issued 20 recommendations, but of those 20, two were partly carried out and the rest were not implemented at all, it found.
