The National Electoral Commission (CNE) has elected Loló Correia director-general of STAE (Secretariado Tecnico de Administraçao Eleitoral, Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration)
Correia, who since 2014 was the provincial director of STAE in the western province of Tete, was elected with 10 votes, followed by Helena Garrine, the current national director of training and civic education at STAE, with only seven points.
He will fill the position vacated by Felisberto Naife last April, after 15 years.
Speaking at a Maputo press conference on Friday, CNE’s spokesperson Paulo Cuinica explained that the jury presented on Thursday, to the Plenary, the minutes of the opening of the public competition and the selection of the candidate for the post of STAE director general.
“As there was no consensus over the choice of the Director-General from among the six names presented by the jury, the members of CNE submitted the candidates to a vote, in a free, fair and transparent election, Loló Correia received 10 votes out of a maximum of 17, and the rest went to Helena Garrine” said Cuinica.
Hence, he added, it was decided that Correia would take over the position of director general of STAE.
He reminded that under the terms of the law in force in the country, the director general of STAE is selected through a public competition organized by CNE and sworn by the Chairperson.
The public competition to select the new director general was launched on 6 July. The requirements include being a civil servant with at least 10 years of service, holder of a high degree, among others.
STAE is the executive body of the CNE. The CNE takes the main decisions and STAE, represented in every Mozambican district during electoral periods, must implement them. In particular, STAE must organize the of voter registration and must run all the many thousands of polling stations needed on election day.
The new STAE general director must begin work almost immediately on preparations for the municipal elections scheduled for October 2023. This includes installing provincial elections commissions and provincial branches of STAE, to be followed, within a month, by the establishment of the commissions in those districts that contain municipalities.
The initial estimate is that the municipal elections will cost 9.7 billion meticais (about 151 million US dollars, at the current exchange rate). Of this sum, 3.2 billion meticais will be spent this year on preparations, and the rest in 2023, including the voting itself and the proclamation of results.
Changing the law, so as to make the electoral bodies less cumbersome and less politicised depends on the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, and so far there is no indication that any of the parliamentary parties intend to submit amendments to the electoral laws.
