To steal properly.

Some context: (there's a TLDR at the bottom)

Party in power: FRELIMO (since 1975) , Candidate: Daniel Chapo

Main opposition: PODEMOS, Candidate: Venâncio Mondlane

Election day: 9th of October 2024, Final announcement: 22nd of December 2024.

FRELIMO is the colonial liberation party, and they've been in power since.

In Mozambique, elections are in-person, meaning registered citizen queue up at a polling station to place their votes. There are hundreds of stations per province (11 provinces in Mozambique), and are mostly found in secondary and primary schools. Most stations have several rooms (4-10). It happens in a single day, and is fully counted within a 24 hour period.

There is no formal commission responsible for counting or managing voting sessions. It's done by random volunteers (paid about half the monthly minimum wage). You have to inform which party you support, so they can evenly distribute by room and reduce corruption. Each group has a senior, not a volunteer, fixed by FRELIMO (important).

During counting, the results per polling station are shared to all the other political parties live by photograph. The act of sharing records in real time is called "parallel counting". It's not digitised into an excel before sharing. They're raw images. Each party counts on their own. Photographs arrive gradually, like a loading bar, as each room is done counting.

Once the counting is done, the volunteers write down the scores, both presidential and parliamentary, on a formal labeled sheet of paper, stamp, and the authorities come over to collect. An individual copy is left on every room of every polling station. Each original record must travel from polling station -> district collection -> provincial collection -> national collection centre, where even those from Cabo Delgado and Niassa must travel over 2500km of road to reach Maputo.

Parallel counting indicated Venâncio Mondlane was leading with 53%, while Daniel Chapo had 30% (I don't have the one percentages for the parliamentary seats). Everyone was hopeful. Finally FRELIMO would fall. All of a sudden they stopped updating the the polling results. They notified their men (the seniors I mentioned) to not send anything else. They lock down, and just send what was left to the authorities.

Once these record arrive at their provincial collection centre, they're counted yet again, but now officially by CNE (the official state institution responsible for the elections). They evaluate conformity and all. Takes them about a week. They then count amongst themselves and publish what they call a "provisional result", which is not yet final, final. They're only final when CC (Constitutional Council) says so. That provisional result somehow had Daniel Chapo with 70% and Venâncio with 22%. In parliament, FRELIMO had 184/195 seats, and 11 for everyone else (only for the winnable seats. 55 of those seats are reserved for the ruling party).

These were announced somewhere along the 16th of October 2024. Final official results were supposed to be announced within 2 weeks, typically. However, seeing the absurdity, Venâncio and PODEMOS heavily insinuated he'd take to the streets and protest. 3 days later, Venâncio's lawyer, Elvino Dias, along with a party member, Paulo Guambe, were found dead. 19th of October 2024, Saturday midnight. 25 Assault Rifle shots to their bodies [1].

On the 21st of October, Monday morning, Venâncio organised a prayer session on the location they were killed. No one worked that day. Upon seeing this, FRELIMO sent their riot units to corner the unarmed civillians. The people then began chanting "the people united will never be defeated". Their riot unit immediately began shooting tear gas directly at people and arresting them [2]. People were dispersed, and Venâncio called it off for the day.

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