The Independent Democratic Action (ADI) published this Tuesday the electoral results that it says were collected by its representative in the National Electoral Commission (CEN), which gave it an absolute majority in the legislative elections of São Tomé and Príncipe.
The disclosure of the provisional district mandates and results was justified, in the same post on the party’s official Facebook page, by Domingos Boa Morte, after the organization’s president refused to announce the data on Monday night, referring to to the distribution of mandates to the Constitutional Court.
According to official data collected by ADI, the party won 29 of the 55 seats in the National Assembly, four more than in the previous legislature, while the Movement for the Liberation of São Tomé and Príncipe/Social Democratic Party (MLSTP/PSD), currently in power, he obtains 18 elected representatives, loses five deputies.
The Independent Citizen Movement/Socialist Party (MCI/PS), better known as ‘Movement Caué’, which ran in these elections in alliance with the National Unity Party (PUN), and which had two deputies in the previous legislature, rose to representation of six elected representatives and can therefore form a parliamentary group.
The Basta movement, created about three months before the elections, enters the São Tomé parliament with two deputies.
The PCD/UDD/MDFM bloc, which in 2018 formed a coalition with the MLSTP to guarantee the ‘new majority’, which supported the government of Jorge Bom Jesus, loses parliamentary representation: the Democratic Convergence Party ran as part of Basta, while that the Movement for Democratic Change/Liberal Union (MDFM/UL) and the Union for Democracy and Development (UDD) did not have enough votes to elect a deputy.
In a message published alongside the CEN tables and graphs, Domingos Boa Morte explains that he took the initiative to disclose the data after the president of the organization, Judge José Carlos Barreiros, refused to announce the district mandates and results. , Monday night. in a “sad press conference”.
The member of the CEN for the ADI said that he had tried to “appeal to patriotism” and that the judge “do what has always been done, that is, announce the district mandates and the results.”
“The president of the CEN did not do it and, even worse, he hinted at what we can still expect from the process when he says that only the Constitutional Court will rule on the mandates,” the message reads.
We, CEN, have an obligation to the people. I am at CEN for ADI, but I waited for my colleagues to speak. In the face of silence, they force me to be alone in giving the results that were calculated by the CEN technicians under the watchful eye of representatives and observers. We all saw the files”, says Boa Morte.
The same source adds that the president of the CEN indicated that “all the documents would be published on the page of the electoral commission”, which did not happen until the time of this publication, around 4:00 p.m. local time (another time in Lisbon), almost 48 hours after the closing of the polls.
“I would like to say that the CEN employees have nothing to do with the attitude of the president and some members,” he says.
At Monday’s press conference, José Carlos Barreiros justified the refusal to reveal the mandates given by some parties, which had already presented their own data and there were “discrepancies.”
Faced with this position of the CEN, a few dozen supporters of the ADI demonstrated near the electoral commission building, burning tires, and demanding disclosure of the distribution of seats.
Source: Observadora
