Belying fraud allegations: Court upholds Angola polls, African Union lauds successful vote

In a deathblow to the 2022 aspirations of the Angola’s opposition, the Constitutional Court of Angola junked the electoral protest lodged by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), declaring the case to be bereft of merit.

The decision upheld the win of the MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola), which had dominated the African country’s political landscape for nearly five decades. It also handed President Joao Lourenco a second term.

UNITA leader Adalberto Costa Junior had cried foul over alleged discrepancies between the count of the National Electoral Commission (NEC) and his party's own tally. The poll body, on the other hand, had mightily defended the process to be fair and transparent.

UNITA claims that its parallel count shows it edging MPLA with the most razor-thin of margins — 49.5% vs 48.2%. A parallel count by civic movement Mudei indeed mirrors UNITA’s numbers.

In the face of the final and unappealable decision, UNITA and other opposition parties have called for peaceful demonstrations against so-called irregularities.

The biggest red flag seems to be the poll body’s failure to release results sheets from individual polling stations as they did in 2017, denying UNITAS the opportunity to compare it with parallel counts. Angola’s NEC only published aggregated results from 19 provinces. Exacerbating the bad optics is the fact that the CNE is largely MPLA-controlled, and that four out of the sixteen commissioners have repudiated the results.

The opposition also decries the lack of election observers, where only 1,300 were present to cover a country twice as big France, and questions why MPLA was given more airtime than others.

Yet even as the controversy hogged the headlines, analysts largely view the allegations as a fly in the ointment in an otherwise successful election. This, as election observers led by the influential African Union (AU), have cited the largely peaceful conduct of the polls.

AU Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat had lauded the exercise as an important milestone in the history of Angola, saying that "once again, the people of Angola have demonstrated their resolve for continuous search for democratic and participatory governance in their country.”

The chairperson went on to congratulate Angolans for turning out in droves to exercise their democratic right to choose their leaders, commend he smooth conduct of the polls, and praise the everyone involved for conducting themselves peacefully throughout the electoral process.

Mahamat has also urged Angolans to continue committing to peace and democracy, appealing for a peaceful and lawful resolution to all election disputes.

What happened with e-voting in Angola?

Photo by Elections 360 via Flickr

The 2012 elections in Angola was marred with a myriad of doubts. Intimidation of opposition candidates, media personalities, election authorities and international observers characterised the political process. The developments portrayed downright electoral fraud, and very few individuals expected free and fair elections.

In recent months news came out that the Spanish Tax Agency fined the company Indra Sistemas S.A. as part of an investigation for the payment of illegal commissions of 2.4 million euros, carried out under the Angolan presidential elections of 2012. Six years later, this investigation has re-open the “Pandora box” of uncertainties surrounding the election process.

Angola’s hope: e-voting

Conventionally, the conditions that facilitate free and fair elections often begin long before Election Day. Nonetheless, within 30 days to the 2012 elections, it was explicit that Angolans were not ready as they could not campaign freely without pressure or intimidation.

The hostility escalated to worrying levels a week toward the election date prompting some patriots and the international community to advice on the postponement of the election date. The electoral body appeared compromised and overwhelmed by the unfolding chaos in the entire circle of national leadership.

The previous election had been associated with widespread rigging and widespread electoral irregularities, which had taken a significant amount of time and financial resources to set strategies in place to curb a repeat. Angolans and the entire continent had been tired of the post-election violence whenever voting concluded with massive uncertainties.

By 2012, Angolans had been psychologically prepared to participate freely in voting for a new National Assembly, and it was going to be their first time to adopt electronic voting. Given that the elections were conducted electronically, there was significant hope for more secure, reliable and transparent ballots, and that post-election convolution would be a thing of the past.

However, when everything seemed wrong with the way campaigns were being conducted, voters saw red flags. The outcome of the elections undermined the independence of the EMB, as most election stakeholders doubted they were free and fair. From massive rigging claims to outright manipulation of results, it appeared the instigation of the electronic voting process was deceiving to the citizens.

Indra’s case

Regarding the election technology provider investigation, the Angolan jurist William Tonet revealed on Radio Despertar, that the company “Indra Sistemas is one of the institutions that had connotations with the Angolan political power that fled taxation in their countries. We had already denounced, in 2012 and 2018, that some companies associated with the government ran engaging in certain types of business. The elections are no longer an act of citizenship and nobility to be a real business.”

Indra organised the logistics of the Angolan presidential elections of 2008, 2012 and 2017.

According to a 2018 investigation in El Confidencial (Spanish outlet), “The Dos Santos regime was always receptive to closing deals with Spanish companies. Indra Sistemas has been one of those companies graced with contracts negotiated without competition or thanks to direct awards.”

The newspaper states that during the organisation of the elections of 2012, “Indra had fictitiously increased by 9.8 million euros the price of the 14 charter planes transporting electoral material to Angola, for the payment of commissions. The 2018 Spanish Tax Agency investigation finally concluded that the unjustified figure was 2.4 million euros, and the matter was settled.”

Until now, it remains unclear all the procedural details in the Angolan 2012 elections. Even if the 2017 general elections had already brought new perspectives to the country, perpetual talks are ongoing to address election integrity. It will continue to be newsworthy how transparency of EMBs and election providers can help spare African nations from imminent post-election chaos.

Elections in Angola, a new scandal for Indra

Picture by fullnews.info

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.