Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, probably never stood a chance. It would have needed ghostbusters to really beat the ruling Frelimo in this week’s Mozambique elections. That’s because legions of “ghost voters” were decisive, if not in securing victory for the ruling party, then at least in giving it the landslide which now looks inevitable, a seasoned election analyst said.

Frelimo’s overkill may well collapse the recent peace deal with Renamo, which has pulled out of the vote count, crying foul.

Though results are not yet official, Frelimo’s apparent triumph – with sitting President Filipe Nyusi likely to win about 71% of the vote and Frelimo a two-thirds majority in Parliament – has surprised many Mozambique observers because the party was widely perceived to be unpopular.

The result has reinforced the belief among many Mozambicans and some outside analysts that the vote rigging was even greater than usual in a country where the ballot has never been regarded as completely secure.

Edson Cortez, head of Mozambique’s Centre for Public Integrity, said Frelimo was expected to do worse than in the last elections because it had not been popular lately. This was especially because of a huge corruption scandal that rocked the country three years ago, when it was revealed that the government had concealed about $2-billion of debt to international bankers in a fraudulent shipping scandal.

“We had many illicit things happening with the election. In Mozambique that’s not unusual. Fraud has become normality.”

While the vote was still being counted in Mozambique, the Maputo government was fighting in the High Court in Johannesburg to have its former finance minister Manuel Chang extradited to Mozambique rather than the US.

The US has charged him in connection with the shipping loan scam and Maputo is terrified that if South Africa sends him to the US to stand trial, he will spill the beans on other senior party and government players implicated in the fraud.

Back in Mozambique, among other alleged acts of election rigging, the tightly Frelimo-controlled electoral authorities registered hundreds of thousands of voters more than the numbers of eligible voters, some election analysts said.

This evidently fictitious electorate predictably emerged from the political ectoplasm on election day to cast their spooky ballots, all for Frelimo it seemed.

Veteran Mozambique election analyst Joseph Hanlon reported that:

“Many polling stations with no voters are being reported in urban areas of Gaza province, including Xai-Xai and Bilene, by observers and our correspondents.

“These are the areas with the 300,000 extra registered voters – the places where the number of voters vastly exceeds the number of voting-age adults. It appears that the ghost voters have their own polling stations.”

Hanlon projected that, bolstered by the large ghost vote, Frelimo was set to win by a landslide, with Nyusi winning at least 70% of the vote, Renamo leader Ossufo Momade getting only 21%, MDM leader Daviz Simango 7%, and Amusi leader Mario Albino less than 1%. Turnout had been 55%.

“The level of fraud and misconduct by the ruling party was significantly higher than in past elections. This appears to have been unnecessary for Frelimo to have won the election, but probably contributed to the landslide,” Hanlon said.

Hanlon thought it likely that Frelimo would also win all the provincial governorships, though in Zambezia the result was not yet clear. Frelimo had a commanding lead but with too few polling stations reported to be sure of the result.

Mozambican political journalist Paul Fauvet said it now looked as though Frelimo would win more than two-thirds of the seats in the National Assembly, allowing it to change the constitution if it chose to. It has given no indication of its intention to do so.

“An unlevel playing field was evident throughout the campaign,” said the European Union Observation Mission in a tough interim statement on Thursday.

“The ruling party dominated the campaign in all provinces and benefited from the advantages of incumbency, including unjustified use of state resources, and more police escorts and media coverage than opponents.”

“Frelimo received the largest share of [public media] coverage, often in an uncritical tone,” the EU noted. “The President of the Republic was often shown or mentioned in his official capacity, promoting projects and giving speeches.

“Limitations of freedom of assembly and movement of opposition parties were often reported.”

“A lack of public trust was observed in the impartiality of the national police forces, who were often perceived as more supportive of the ruling party and not managing properly the election-related incidents and complaints. The murder of a prominent national observer by members of the national police force had the effect of exacerbating an already existing climate of fear and self-censorship prevalent in Mozambican society.”

The EU also noted a general lack of public confidence that the electoral authority, the National Election Commission(CNE) and the judiciary were really independent and free from political influence.

The EU also “observed four cases of ballot box stuffing in Sofala and Manica. The absence of national observers in almost half of polling stations did not contribute to the transparency of the process.” And results sheets were not posted at 14 observed polling stations, as required by law.

Grant Masterson of the Johannesburg-based Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) which is officially observing the elections, was more positive. He said that although official results were not yet in the public domain, early indications were that Frelimo would retain the presidency and most provincial assemblies.

“Whatever the means by which they got to this point, and the pre-election period was far from ideal, it does seem that this is more or less where they would have arrived at anyway,” he said from Maputo.

He noted that Nyusi’s apparent landslide victory was so large that it would be difficult to contend that it had been achieved entirely by rigging.

“It is always tricky to assess elections where pre-election concerns dominate the national conversation. There is a bit of a chicken and egg situation here. Did Nyusi and Frelimo win by a landslide because the opposition didn’t get its act together, for instance by uniting behind one presidential candidate? Or did they win because Frelimo got out the message to voters, in the process convincing voters they were going win anyway and so opposition voters were discouraged from voting?”

Masterson disagreed with Hanlon’s assessment about the impact of the ghost vote on the result, especially in Gaza. He said Frelimo had always completely dominated that province and also always got out its voters in vast numbers. So, the 100% turnouts with 99% voting for Frelimo in some polling districts were numbers that have been seen before in Gaza specifically.

He agreed with Hanlon that registration of many ghost voters had occurred, but said this had the effect of inflating the number of parliamentary seats in Gaza, as the allocation of parliamentary seats was proportional to the population in each province.

Masterson said he believed that Frelimo may have had a rude awakening last year when it did badly in local government elections and so had improved its performance as a result. DM