"The model minutes of the polling station now published, provided by Indra [Spanish multinational accused by the opposition of being at the service of the government party, Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola], is invalid and must be immediately corrected as it does not contain the number of voters, which is a mandatory element", says the Humanist Party of Angola (PHA) in a statement.
According to the newly formed party led by Florbela Malaquias [the first woman to run for President of Angola], the CNE published "a few days" before the elections the "models of the polling station minutes, the summary minutes of the polling station and the Regulations on the Organization and Functioning of the National Scrutiny Center".
It is estimated that of the 14.3 million Angolan voters, more than two million correspond to dead or displaced people who will not be able to vote, because the registers are not purged of these cases.
"The credibility, transparency and validity of the general elections are seriously threatened" with this publication in the Diário da República", says the PHA, noting that the model of summary minutes of polling stations [a summary of polling stations] " also needs to be corrected, because it also omits the number of voters".
Without this, "the electoral truth inherent in the correspondence between the number of existing ballot papers in the polls and the number of voters who voted at each polling station cannot be ascertained", says the PHA.
"When Indra was hired, in January, the CNE ordered its supplier to include the number of voters, both in the polling station minutes and in the polling station summary minutes", so "it is not understood why which led the National Electoral Commission to remove the number of voters element from the electoral minutes, just a few days before the elections", he said.
As for the regulation, the PHA understands that the document "offends the principle of legality" because "it comes to confer on outsiders the exercise of powers that the law attributes only to members of the CNE" and, in the case of this body, it attributes "only to two of the 17 members" functions that should be "exercised collectively [...] without any differentiation or discrimination", namely in the access to information and circulation in all the steps of the electoral process, namely the process of inserting the manual data of the assemblies "in the Indra computers".
"These limitations offend the constitutional principle of equal rights and duties of the members of the National Electoral Commission, offend the principle of transparency and also offend the principle of collegiality in the exercise of the CNE's powers", accuses the PHA.
In this sense, the party presented this Monday at the CNE "a formal complaint", requesting that the minutes contain the number of voters, among other requests to correct what they classify as illegalities.
The PHA also stressed that "the sovereign people of Angola are the sole master of the election, the natural and irreplaceable supervisor of the acts and omissions of the National Electoral Commission, therefore it urges all its members to guide their conduct by respecting the Constitution and to the law so as not to spoil the party of democracy".
The CNE is meeting this Monday in plenary.
Angola goes to the polls on 24 August to choose a new President of the Republic and new representatives in the National Assembly.
