Good afternoon. European Union (EU) officials are not known for their wit or comic abilities, but the publication of the EU observer mission’s report on last year’s elections is a masterpiece of black comedy. The head of the mission, Laura Ballarín, presented the final report to President Daniel Chapo yesterday. Both of them smiled for the cameras as the report was handed over, with its 18 recommendations for reforming future elections to prevent fraud. And yet Chapo benefited from and acquiesced in the widespread electoral fraud witnessed before, during and after polling day. As long as his ruling Frelimo party is in charge, there is no prospect of serious electoral reform in Mozambique. Ballarín’s report, based on the largest-ever election observer mission the EU has ever sent to Mozambique (all 178 of them), was a massive waste of time, effort and paper and its presentation to Chapo was deeply surreal. She might as well have presented a report to the lions in Gorongosa National Park on how they could become vegan.

Of course, the report might potentially be useful if the EU were to use it to apply pressure to the Frelimo regime. There were several observer missions monitoring the elections in October, but the EU’s mission was in a unique position, as it represented a body with real and operative political power. Not only that, but the EU is a major donor to Mozambique. It is in an excellent role to exert leverage over the country through withholding aid and applying sanctions, if it wishes. Sanctions can of course be leveled against individuals in positions of power and selected organisations, so that ordinary people are not harmed.

Unfortunately, there is no sign that the EU is currently willing to do this. Ballarín was careful to say this week that no EU election observer mission ever validates or invalidates election results. That may be technically true, but other missions have come very close to doing so.

The final report of the EU mission observing Zimbabwe’s elections in 2023, for example, said that they were characterised by a “curtailment of rights and freedoms and the lack of a level playing field, which limited voters’ ability to make their choices in a genuinely free and pluralistic environment.” Much the same could be said about Mozambique. But the Mozambican report makes no such criticism. Nor is there any equivalent of the language in the Zimbabwean report that “the election results could not be independently verified”, although this is certainly true of Mozambique.

Instead, what the EU has provided is a largely well-researched and well-produced report which is full of damning evidence about the elections, but indulges in the impossible dream that the system which carried out the electoral fraud is prepared to clean itself up. Again and again, the same examples of fraud which observers in Mozambique complained about are mentioned: massive over-registration of voters, selection of pro-Frelimo polling station staff, a campaign playing field tilted in favour of Frelimo, evidence of ballot-stuffing, unjustified alteration of vote counts, an inability of the courts to provide justice in election disputes, and doubts about the review undertaken by the Constitutional Council. Of 51 district vote tabulation processes taken by the National Elections Commission, the EU mission rated 23 of them as “bad” or “very bad”. And so on. There is one serious omission however: no mention is made of the string of killings of opposition activists since the elections, which has taken place apart from the violent protests and which looks suspiciously like a set of targeted assassinations. Recommendations to fix each problem are offered, which at best will end up in a recycling facility.

If that sounds too cynical, page 11 of the report notes that, after the 2019 general elections, an earlier EU mission issued 20 recommendations. Of those 20, two were partly implemented and the rest were ignored.

Even if election observers do not have the authority to reject election results, that has not stopped the EU’s political leaders from doing so. Last year, the EU firmly rejected the presidential election results in Venezuela, on the basis that the electoral authorities there had not provided a breakdown of the results. A breakdown by polling station was also missing in Mozambique, as the report notes, and has been missing for many years, but the EU has yet to reject a single election result in Mozambique.

Whether this is due to Mozambique’s importance to EU member states — as a potential alternative source of gas to Russia, for example, or an ally in the fight against Islamic State — or to other factors is a matter of debate. But it is not enough for EU officials to protest that it is not their job to reject elections. The EU is meant to be an executive power; it is meant to do things, like uphold democracy and fundamental rights, and it does take action when it chooses to. It is not a group of academics producing reports to just sit on a shelf in a university library gathering dust. This latest report is a condemnation of Frelimo as expected, but failure to act on it will also be a condemnation of the EU. Perhaps Ballarín could give her colleagues some recommendations.

Agenda:

Today: President Daniel Chapo visits Zambézia province
Today: President Chapo attends Southern African Development Community's extraordinary summit of heads of state and government in Harare, Zimbabwe, arranged to discuss the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Today: European Union's election observer mission to Mozambique holds press conference on its final report
Monday: Public holiday in Mozambique for Heroes’ Day. Zitamar Daily Briefing will not be published

Today’s headlines:

Relatives afraid after police arrest brother of children abducted in Mumu (Integrity)
Armed forces say operation launched after insurgent attack near gold mine (AFP)
Zumbo district “could have Tete’s third largest coalfield” (Rádio Moçambique)
Maputo Municipal Council seeks private managers for beaches (Integrity, Evidências)

Relatives afraid after police arrest brother of children abducted in Mumu (Integrity)

The riot police UIR on Tuesday arrested the elder brother of two of the seven children who were abducted by insurgents on 23 January in the village of Mumu, in the district of Mocímboa da Praia, Cabo Delgado province. The police claimed that he had links to the insurgents, justifying the fact that his two brothers were freed, while the others remain hostages. A local leader informed the police that the man had no suspicious behaviour, but his opinion was ignored. The detainee's family is desperate and has little hope of seeing their son back, since there is a history of arrests culminating in deaths or disappearances. Before kidnapping the seven children, the insurgents killed a resident of the village, according to local sources.

Armed forces say operation launched after insurgent attack near gold mine (AFP)

Mozambique’s armed forces say that an operation has been launched in response to what it called a “terrorist attack” in Cabo Delgado province’s Meluco district. Forces have been sent to a dense forested area following the attack at the weekend, the military told the AFP news agency on Thursday, in response to an enquiry about the insurgent attack. Three people were reported to have been killed at an unlicensed gold mine in Meluco on Sunday, and according to a local NGO worker, other miners were forced to hand over money in order to escape with their lives.