The president of the Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), Albino Forquilha, said today in Maputo that the only way to stop the wave of demonstrations in the country is to restore electoral truth.

The National Electoral Commission (CNE) has released the centralized results of the October 9 general elections. Frelimo and its candidate Daniel Chapo are the winners. The independent presidential candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, and Podemos claimed victory in the vote. The latter have been leading demonstrations since October 21 calling for the "truth of the ballot box" to be restored.

With the exception of Frelimo, some political parties say that the CNE results do not reflect the truth of the elections and propose that the elections be annulled and repeated.

Albino Forquilha told journalists that the first proposal to stop the wave of demonstrations is to restore electoral truth. In this regard, he believes that the Constitutional Council should cross-check the notices issued by the CNE and the political parties with independent entities. This would be the way to ensure the transparency of the results.

"We continue to insist that the condition [for putting an end to the demonstrations] is electoral truth. Everything must be done so that the public notices and minutes sent out are transparent. This means that actors outside the Constitutional Council, but accepted by law, must participate, such as political party representatives, observers and journalists," he said.

O MZNews knows that the CC has already checked the minutes and notices sent by the political parties and the CNE for ten provinces. The work began around three weeks ago, and was sometimes conditioned by the demonstrations.

"Since there is evidence that there are difficulties in bringing about electoral truth, we believe that there should be a forensic audit aimed at holding the actors responsible for this problem," he noted.

Once the impasse in legitimizing the electoral truth has been verified, Podemos proposes the establishment of principles or mechanisms "for some dialogue" and the identification of the problem "that puts us at the current stage" and then "solutions based on the problem identified".

As for whether Podemos would be willing to accept a possible annulment of the elections, Forquilha explained that this would be a "plan B" to be evaluated if the conditions for restoring the electoral truth were proven to be non-existent and if the perpetrator were held responsible.

"There have already been elections and we've paid a lot of money. So if they are to be invalidated, there must be a very thorough investigation into the causes, in other words, who caused the problem. There must be very serious accountability. Only if there are no concrete elements that allow us to go to the electoral justice system can we think about plan B, for Podemos," he said.

According to Forquilha, there is already a document in place to accommodate this possibility of repeating the elections.