Renamo, the largest opposition party in Mozambique, wants major changes to the electoral law to avoid a repeat of the fraud and misconduct seen in the 2023 local elections.

According to the CIP Bulletin on the Electoral Process in Mozambique, Renamo is calling for greater transparency and a ban on secret changes to the results.

"Instead of secret changes, there should be recounts or new elections," suggests Renamo, quoted in the Bulletin.

Renamo believes that the current system of electoral courts is an ad hoc concoction. "The Constitutional Council, which is not a court, has been transformed into a supreme electoral court. The district courts have been transformed. Therefore, the inclusion of the MP in the electoral court system could be a step forward. According to the amendment, electoral complaints and appeals could be submitted either to the district court or to the Public Prosecutor's Office, which would have to rule within 72 hours," reads the document.

Renamo suggests that the new transparency should include live transmission of the vote count. Renamo's proposals call for a major increase in transparency. Renamo proposes that during the initial count, at the polling station, "For electoral transparency, the act of voting can be accompanied by immediate publicity of its work, with the candidate delegates being able to capture images, sound, film or lives for public consumption."

Also quoted by the Bulletin, Renamo says that live reporting of the counts would be a major increase in transparency. "The tabulation of the city or district is now done in secret by STAE. Renamo proposes that the STAE staff who put the figures on a spreadsheet be monitored by members of the electoral commission to compare the data and ensure that the figures are not being altered," the document states.

Renamo says that the same control would be applied to handwritten minutes. All the key documents would be put on the Internet, at local and national level: at municipal or district level, a digitized version would be put on the Internet within 20 days

of all the original minutes and notices of the polling stations and the CDE; the Provincial Elections Commission would put its original minutes and notices on the Internet within 5 days; and, within 20 days of the results being presented, the National Elections Commission would publish the original notices and minutes of all levels - polling stations, district and province - on the Internet.

For Renamo, this information has never been easily available and would make it much easier to report fraud quickly.

Renamo would ban most of the current secret changes by STAEs and electoral commissions, and replace them with recounts, as in most democracies.

The Constitutional Council declared last year that it alone could order new elections in response to misconduct, but Renamo proposes that the district courts and the MP could also order recounts and new elections. Any recount would have to be carried out in the presence of a magistrate.

Renamo wants the polling station notices to be shown to each party delegate present at the district tabulation, or at a new tabulation, so that they can be compared with their own copies. If they don't match, the party delegate must immediately report the element that doesn't match. If there is a disagreement between two different notices for the same polling station, the case will immediately be taken to the MP or district court.

Renamo proposes that notices from the same polling station that don't match should be compared to check signatures, form numbers, handwriting and other distinctive signs.

(Source: CIP)