1.8 Million Voters Register

Maputo, 3 May (AIM) – In the first ten days of voter registration (up to last Saturday, 29 April) 1.8 million Mozambicans registered, ahead of the municipal elections scheduled for 11 October.

According to figures released by the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) on Tuesday, this is 18 per cent of the target figure of 9.9 million.

There are 3,192 brigades, registering an average of 180,805 citizens per day, which is 57 people per brigade per day. Voter registration is scheduled to end on 3 June, and so it is easy to calculate that, at the current rate, the registration brigades will fall well short of meeting the target.

If the brigades continue to register an average of 180,805 voters a day, then by 3 June slightly more than 8.1 million people will have been registered. That is about 82 per cent of the target.

There are sharp differences between the provinces. Gaza, traditionally a stronghold of the ruling Frelimo Party, has registered 29 per cent of its target. But the two most populous provinces, Nampula and Zambezia, have only registered around 15 per cent.

At the last municipal elections, in 2018, the main opposition party, Renamo, took control of five of the seven municipalities in Nampula. Frelimo is hoping to win them all back this time.

Other jewels in the opposition’s crown which Frelimo is anxious to take are the port city of Beira, and the capital of Zambezia province, Quelimane.

Beira has been run by the second opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), for the past decade and a half. Quelimane was also in MDM hands until the mayor elected on the MDM ticket, Manuel de Araujo, defected to Renamo in 2018.

The provincial breakdown of the registration so far is as follows:

Province Target Registered %

Maputo city 728,946 139,062 19.08%
Maputo province 1,283,336 244,977 19.09%
Gaza 517,020 149,786 28.97%
Inhambane 530.076 117,749 22.21%
Sofala 943,211 160,702 17.04%
Manica 732,063 172,345 23.54%
Tete 861,843 131,379 15.24%
Zambezia 1,429,873 221,363 15.48%
Nampula 1,474,465 222,126 15.06%
Cabo Delgado 740,538 155,761 21.03%
Niassa 680,254 92,803 13.64%
TOTAL 9,921,625 1,808,053 18.22%

Registration has been very slow, partly because of repeated problems with computers and printers. Despite the training, and despite pilot registration in nine districts in February, many of the brigade members are still unfamiliar with the machines and take an unacceptably long time to process voters.

Printers break down, making it impossible to print voter cards, without which citizens will be unable to vote in October. In most such cases, voters are told to come back the following day to pick up their cards – but there is no guarantee that the printers will be repaired by then.

On Tuesday, STAE claimed that all the registration posts are open and problems have been “drastically reduced’ . But the election bulletin published by the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), disagrees. CIP has correspondents scattered across the municipalities, and they reported that some of the posts they visited were not open, or not operational. Printing the voter cards remains a major headache – the CIP correspondents reported posts that had not printed cards for the previous three or four days. At least 20 per cent of the posts had problems, mainly card printing.

This became the excuse for a blatantly illegal move. In Gurue municipality, in Zambezia, some brigade members took equipment to the local STAE warehouse, and printed voter cards overnight.

This was done without the knowledge of monitors from the opposition political parties, and inevitably there were suggestions that cards were being printed for people who had not registered, to be used to vote for Frelimo.

But the clandestine printing in Gurue was caught on a video, which then circulated widely on social media.

STAE reacted with an instruction that all registration activities must be done at the official registration posts during the official opening hours, 08.00 to 16.00.

Another frequent complaint is queue jumping. In many posts reported by the CIP correspondents, people are forced to spend many hours (or more than a day) in the queues because the brigade members prioritise people who work for the public administration, and even people whose names have been submitted by Frelimo.

This is entirely illegal, and STAE has stressed that citizens should be registered in the order in which they arrive at the queue. Across Mozambican state institutions, priority in queues is given to the elderly, the disabled and pregnant women – citizens do not enjoy priority merely because of where they work, much less because of which party they support.
(AIM)
Pf/ (765)