Luanda– Angola’s Constitutional Court (TC) Wednesday here rejected main opposition Unita party’s Luanda election results dispute appeal saying that lack of poll-books at polling stations has not made the election invalid.
In its ruling, the TC says Unita is wrong in arguing that there were no guarantees in Luanda’s constituency that each voter cast the ballot once only, just because some polling stations were out of poll-books.
According to the TC, the lack of poll-books is not enough to dispute the exemplarity of the voting, as one man one vote guarantee was secured by the compulsory use of the indelible paint, alike in other electoral systems.
The TC also stated that compulsory use of indelible paint offers enough technical guarantee for one man one vote.
"The lack of poll-books does not deny that the exemplarity of the voting could have been witnessed as asserted by the various election observer reports and the absolute non-existence of complaints from list delegates,” said the Constitutional Court.
To the plenary of the Constitutional Court considered as well that lack of poll-books does not exclude the polling stations from all operations involving the ballot counting.
The main opposition Unita party alleged that the National Election Commission (CNE) permitted and instructed for the voting in Luanda to take place in two day which, it argued, was a violation to the article 38 of the Electoral Law.
It also justified appealing to the TC, with allegations of irregularities during the voting in the capital, with stress to the lack of enough material for the voting.
The Constitutional Court examined each of the two arguments and ruled that despite the CNE failure to comply with the articles 108 and 118 of the Electoral Law was not enough to support Unita’s demand for the voting to be repeated in Luanda.
According to the TC ruling, read out by its counsellor judge, Onofre dos Santos, CNE corrected most of the organisational and logistic irregularities, which enabled the Luanda electors to cast their ballot freely.
With affect, according to the Constitutional Court, in the Luanda constituency, alike in the others across the country, the legislative election of September 5 were free, transparent, universal and secret, in line with the Constitution and the Electoral Law, despite some organisational and logistic constraints.
GL
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