Maputo, 8 Jun (AIM) – The increase in equipment available and the expansion of the working hours of the registration posts helped increase significantly the number of people registered in the closing period of the Mozambican voter registration – “but this was not enough to compensate for the delays in the first five weeks”, comments the civil society consortium “Mais Integridade” (“More integrity”) in a statement issued on Thursday covering the final ten days of the registration,
“Cases of suspension or interruption of operations because of breakdowns continued to affect the performance of the registration brigades”, said the consortium, “and a large number of voters did not receive their voter cards at the moment of registration because the printers were out of order – about 10 per cent of the registrations observed over the entire 45 days”.
Many municipalities complied with the instruction from the National Elections Commission (CNE) to keep the registration posts open until 22.00 last Friday and zero hours on Saturday, but Mais Integridade found that others did not, alleging they had received “higher orders”. In these areas, the posts closed well before the times stipulated by the CNE.
Irregularities continued right up to the end – notably queue jumping, sometimes involving the payment of bribes to allow some people to
register before those who had spent many hours in the queues.
In the 45 days of voter registration, the 68 Mais Integridade observers witnessed the registration of about 62,000 voters, through more than 4,200 visits to 918 registration posts in 27 municipalities, or about 50 per cent of the posts in those municipalities.
In most cases, the observers had free access to the registration posts and the information necessary for effective observation. But there were 17 cases where registration brigades illegally prevented access to the posts.
On Saturday, the last day of registration, in the northern municipality of Angoche, police detained two Mais Integridade observers for taking photographs of the room where a registration post was located, but which had been abandoned by the registration brigade. There is nothing remotely illegal about observers taking photos but a police officer arrrested them and confiscated their material.
The observers were held in the Angoche district police command for two hours and were only released after the consortium’s Nampula provincial coordinator intervened with the district director of STAE (Electoral Adminstration Technical Secretariat) and the district police commander.
On 31 May, Mais Integridade observers were expelled from a post in a Nampula primary school by police agents, with the connivance of thepost supervisor, claiming that these were instructions from STAE and the CNE.
At a post in Alto Molocue, in Zambezia province, the observation team was not allowed to work because the head of the brigade rejected their credentials.
At the post in the Beira Industrial and Commercal Institute, the head of the brigade, for the second time, banned the observers from witnessing the registration, claiming, quite untruthfully, that they should be accompanied by STAE.
In the final ten days, large crowds built up at the registration posts, particularly in Nampula, Zambezia, Sofala and Niassa provinces. The observers noted that the longest queues were in the municipalities of Nacala, Angoche and Malema in Nampula, Quelimane and Alto Molocue in Zambezia, Beira and Caia in Sofala, and Cuamba and Mandimba in Niassa.
In the last ten days, in two per cent of the visits the posts were closed (compared with only 0.3 per cent in the previous period). The percentage of posts open, but not working because of equipment malfunctions or lack of registration bulletins, fell from 20 to 14 per cent.
A post at the Munangaline primary school in Cuamba had been paralysed for two weeks due to alleged breakdowns. STAE had been informed, but no solution was forthcoming. Another Cuamba post had been out of operation for a week, and the observers found that the printer at a post in Moatize municipality, in Tete, was supposdly “breaking down constantly”.
Power cuts also prevented posts from working. The observers found, for example, that in Maputo province, at the post at Djuba B, in Matola Rio, citizens were forced to go home without registering, because there was no electricity.
The Mais Integridade observers, since the start of registration, witnessed 6,500 cases of voters who did not receive their voter cards on the day of registration – or more than 10 per cent of all registrations observed.
The consortium noted that, in the final ten days the average time taken to process a voter fell from seven to six minutes.
Many posts disobeyed the CNE instruction to remain open until 22.00 on Friday and zero hours on Saturday. In some municipalities the STAE district directors ordered the closure of the posts, despite the long queues of potential voters waiting to register.
On Saturday the STAE director in Morrumbala, in Zambezia, ordered the closure of all the posts in the municipal area, alleging it was impossible to continue registration. But all the posts had electricity and thus lighting, so there was no real obstacle to continued registration.
The STAE preliminary figures for the 45 days of registration were as follows:
20 April – 3 June
Province Target Registered Percentage
Maputo City 728 946 631 170 86,6%
Maputo Province 1 283 336 1 072 266 83,6%
Gaza 517 020 534 107 103,3%
Inhambane 530 076 394 883 74,5%
Sofala 943 211 798 639 84,7%
Manica 732 063 689 553 94,2%
Tete 861 843 624 970 72,5%
Zambezia 1 429 873 1 198 117 83,8%
Nampula 1 474 465 1 266 857 85,9%
Cabo Delgado 740 538 734 295 99,2%
Niassa 680 254 442 726 65,1%
Total 9 921 625 8 387 583 84,5%
(AIM)
Pf/ (943)
