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Elections in Angola have
always been marred by scandals and allegations of fraud. The ones held in 2017 were
not the exception to the rule.
This time, Indra, a Spanish
information technology and defense systems company, was at the center of the
controversy. Not only because of the way it was chosen as election technology
provider, but also because it accepted to implement a vote transmission and
tallying system that apparently violated Angola’s legal framework.
Three months before the 2017 election,
Angolan opposition parties UNITA, CASA-CE, PRS and FNLA denounced that the
government hired the Spanish company Indra "to assist in manipulating
election results to their advantage." According to a memo from UNITA,
Indra agreed to design and implement a solution to transmit the preliminary
results to a destination server different from the one established by Angola's
Organic Law on General Elections.
Before the elections, Friends
of Angola, a civil society organization based in Washington DC, had sent a
request to the Spanish embassy asking for an
investigation into the Spanish company Indra, in an effort to prevent this
company from being hired again by the Angolan government.
The request letter, signed by
Florindo Chivucute, Executive Director of Friends of Angola, points out that "a threat to democracy in Angola should
be seen as a threat against all democratic nations." The letter based
its concerns on a memo signed by UNITA and shared with the European Union
Mission, where three disturbing facts were listed:
1. Bidding process. Indra was
the only company that prepared a proposal and participated in the bid.
According to the memo, it is likely that the
Spanish company had access to privileged information and would have entered
into over-invoicing agreements with the Angolan entities involved long before
it had officially received the invitation. The official cost of its
specific proposal for the two projects on the bid amounts to 1,433 million
Euros.
2. Vote Transmission and Tallying.
Angola's Organic Law on General Elections establishes two flows of information:
one for the preliminary results and other for official results. The CNE
requested Indra to develop a software application that would include only one flow
of information, which generates a provisional clearance, which is then converted
into a final ballot. Indra
accepted this petition that violates the legal framework. Instead of
transmitting the results from the base of the pyramid, Indra's solution allowed
the polling stations’ results to be first sent to the top of the pyramid, the
headquarters of the CNE in Luanda, to have the national results to determine
the provincial results. According to the press, this request came directly from
the MPLA, as they did not want municipal commissions to divulge or publish
provisional results.
3. This action may help
explain why in the elections held in 2008 and 2012, also organized with Indra's
support, the CNE never published the election results by municipality and
polling station, as it is mandated by the rules of transparency and good
international election practices. Both elections were considered to be
fraudulent, and as such were vehemently contested.
Six weeks after the 2017 election,
the opposition still refused to accept the results, with discrepancies
continuing to emerge in the tallying process of the National Electoral
Commission (Comissão Nacional Eleitoral - CNE) and the opposition's own numbers.
The opposition is not disputing the MPLA victory but rather the tabulation
process that awarded the ruling party more votes.
Corruption scandals have surrounded
Indra in other latitudes. One of its most recent scandals was revealed in March
2017, when the Brazilian
government sanctioned one of Indra's subsidiaries, Indra Brasil Soluções e Serviços Tecnológicos Group. The
company is now under administrative sanction, which prevents it from participating
in public tenders.
Indra Brasil Soluções e Serviços Tecnológicos Group
was called Politec, but changed its name a few years ago after the Brazilian
authorities broke into its offices to investigate whether or not it had paid
approximately $100
million in bribes to win bids.
