The local elections of October 11, 2023 were full of irregularities, breaking the record of cases submitted to the Supreme Court (TS) compared to the last presidential elections.

While the cases submitted to the Constitutional Council (CC) were being processed and various renowned voices and entities on the political circuit in Mozambique were publicly presenting their positions, the TS called a press conference to also present its assessments and findings of the process to the public. However, the conference was canceled at the last minute, without any argument. This was to take place before the public presentation of the results validated in the Judgment by the CC.

On Tuesday, the TS spokesman explained, via the STV television channel, the reasons for the decision to hold the meeting with journalists. He said that some aspects needed to be matured and that society itself had taken care of this.

"If we had intervened at that time, we would have caused some confusion in the process," he said.

He guaranteed that the cancellation of the meeting with the press had no external hand, i.e. the TS had not been pressured to do so.

"No. We don't work under pressure. We simply found that it wasn't appropriate," he said, noting that the purpose of the press conference was to share statistics on the electoral process.

"Eventually, we would have touched on other aspects. But we preferred to give time to time and the issues matured. We felt it was necessary to let the Constitutional Council finish its work of validating the electoral process," he said, noting that now is the time for debate, not least to produce recommendations.

On the other hand, Nhatitima said that the TS is pleased and proud of the work done by the district courts during the election period, not least because they may have brought challenges for the CC to produce its jurisprudence.

"The number of appeals that have been filed, in only 65 municipalities, is much higher than in the last presidential elections. In the last presidential elections we had around 54 electoral appeals, and in this municipal election we have 91 appeals. This means maturity on the part of the political parties. That's what we want," he said.