Mozambique’s National Electoral Commission (CNE) will soon begin announcing provisional results from Wednesday’s presidential, parliamentary and provincial assemblies’ elections following a relatively peaceful vote, says Paulo Cuinica, spokesman for the electoral body.
Counting of the ballots began shortly after the polls ended.
Mozambique electoral code stipulates that the district electoral commissions have 72 hours to announce results at the district level, while the provincial electoral commission have five days to report results. The national results must be announced 15 days after Election Day, according to Cuinica.
“But as the results will be coming out [it] would be announced at the press center, which is prepared to receive results from the different polling stations. So partially, we will be announcing the results as they will be pouring in,” he said.
Cuinica appealed to Mozambicans to remain calm as the CNE collates results from polling stations across the country.
“The polling went smoothly generally, but we had some challenges in few places like in Tsangano, where we don’t yet have the full report, but we understand that the situation was not that calm,” he said. “In general the election went very well, people are very enthusiastic, the turnout very early in the morning was very high, it slowed down during lunchtime, but then again it was very high during closing time.”
Cuinica said the CNE has yet to officially receive any complaints from the 30 political parties that participated in the general election. He said the electoral body implemented measures to ensure the outcome of the elections is free, transparent and credible.
“We have not received any formal complaint from the political parties because the political parties are represented by polling officers and also by their representatives. So we would expect that this representation is able to follow all the procedures of the elections, and therefore, we don’t see many complaints about the elections,” he said.
Cuinica said the election appeared to have generated global interest. About 600 international observers from 12 different organizations monitored the elections. He also said that an estimated 6,000 local observers monitored the elections, while about 41 international journalists covered the poll.
Cuinica said the CNE is waiting for the reports of both the local and international poll observers about how the electoral body conducted the election.
