Year 2013’s presidential election’s round two: widespread and systematic electoral frauds

And the plaintiffs actually have as many evidences as certainties. Presidential candidate Hery Rajaonarimampianina took advantage from the illegal capitalization of support from the ruling power which massively misled voters’ choices. So sounds the indictment produced by presidential candidate Jean Louis Robinson and by the Democratic Front as a whole.

“We are not talking about small scale frauds with insignificant effect on electoral results but rather about massive ones” argued Saraha Georget Rabeharisoa, former presidential candidate knocked out of the race at the end of the year 2013’s presidential election’s round one. She argued that candidate Nb. 33 and his staff noticed that kind of fraud in 117 districts out of 119, as a result of the examination of 90% of reports they mustered.

“We bring evidences of this vote rigging process”, confirmed Saraha Rabeharisoa, who does even not require report comparison or electoral tool check up. “These elections are not believable, devoid of transparency and credit, and challenged.” The prominent international jurist Pr. Raymond Ranjeva expressed his concerns caused by the evidence of violation of “electoral integrity” which comes to light when released results do not agree with electoral matters of fact.

What kind of electoral frauds at all?

“We could have held ourselves lucky if the vote was rigged to deny a candidate a single percent at a time, as it did during the first round” had warned Saraha Georget. She explained that Electoral Register’s gaps have largely been exploited by the ruling power to provide 6% to its champion: “He actually had a margin of 400 000 votes from scratch on the starting line.”

On December 20th 2013, ballot stuffing became the electoral integrity’s main nemesis:”There was an average of 20 votes casts on the behalf of people who did not show up to the polls per station. Although the figure does not seem significant, it actually is on national scale.”

Demography manipulation also played its role. 800 voters have, for example, been relocated to a completely alien ward in Soalala. In Toliary city, national identification cards have been massively produced for voters deprived of their Electoral Cards by the failure to share them out. In Analalava, purposely marked ballots emerged.

and what about this famous single Ballot paper?

The single ballot was basically expected to become a way to lower voter rigging rates. It actually became the perfect booster for widespread electoral wrong doing. Even in the capital city, polling stations ran short of ballots although the local turnout happened to be as low as 50%. Where could these ballots have gone to on the very D-Day?

Jean Louis Robinson and his front denounced the fact that missing ballots popped up anew after the conclusion of the voting process, marked up with pens completely different from the one used inside the box all day long. This is also another form of ballot stuffing capitalized on that day.

For lack of ballot papers, one polling station in the outback had to open the voting process up at noon. But all of the disappointed voters who went back home magically did their duty anyway. Another polling station shut its doors at noon on the same account, yet the local turnout was told to be “normal.” Some reports have been misreported, if recorded at all, following the counting process; some mailed electoral boxes have been torn open and so on…

The press conference held by the presidential candidate supported by the Ravalomanana political sphere and the AVANA political party captured the audience’s attention by detailing the process of an evidence of vote buying possible based on any form of intimidation or blackmail. “It is a revolving system” explained Jean Louis Robinson. A voter gets one unmarked ballot paper, immediately marks it before the fraudster or vote buyer, goes about his voting duty, puts the purposely marked ballot in the box, and returns the unmarked ballot paper legally provided inside the polling station to the fraudster outdoors.

Denouncing, but to which end?

“Electoral frauds have always been a rock to reckon with in one’s boot, but this time around, the rock has grown as big as a whole cliff” declared Jean Louis Robinson’s campaign manager when summarizing the situation. Eugene Mangalaza is keen on raising awareness so that the people’s choice gets not misled.

Being awarded 53% of the votes, presidential candidate Hery Rajaonarimamapianina may reckon with a formal victory granted by the Electoral Commission. His rival clearly intends to go on with filling charges before the Special Electoral Court, with evidences of massive frauds in hand, and expects his disqualification. Jean Louis Robinson requires a comparison and an in depth examination of the evidences, more particularly the reports and the figures on ballots.

The replacement candidate injected in the race at the eleventh hour in the stead of Kolo Roger and Jules Etienne has already built on electoral frauds and narrowly escaped expulsion from the Court by carefully keeping his own hands clean from the busted schemes. By then, he went off with a mild sanction, namely the invalidation of mere 5000 votes, but was kept in the race. How strong will the Court’ stand be, now that the offence is more than a hundred times bigger, and committed by the ruling power?