Inflated registration figures from Gaza

Maputo, 9 Jun (AIM) – The total voter registration figures from the southern Mozambican province of Gaza are impossibly high, with the province reaching 129 per cent of its target figure (which compares with a national average of 91 per cent).

According to the projections made by the National Statistics Institute (INE), based on the 2017 population census, there are 186,130 adults of voting age (18 years and above) in Gaza. But the registration brigades in the province registered 239,263 people – the latest bulletin from the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), notes that this is around 53,000 more voting age adults than the INE says exist.

CIP argues this means that the registration brigades were busy registering “ghost voters” – people who cannot exist.

The most extreme figure was from the Gaza municipality of Bilene Beach, which had a voting age population of only 5,301, but registered 8,105 people – 153 per cent of the target.

The situation was similar in many other Gaza municipalities: Chibuto reached 134 per cent of its target, Chokwe 132 per cent, and Xai-Xai 137 per cent.

A few municipalities elsewhere in the country had equally impossible figures – Homoine and Vilankulo, in Inhambane province, reached 150 and 142 per cent of their targets, while Maganja da Costa, in Zambezia reached an extraordinary 172 per cent, and Metangula, on the shores of Lake Niassa, reached 142 per cent.

From the reports by observers, it seems likely that many of the “ghost voters” are people from outside the municipal area, but who were registered illegally inside it.

Registration figures were also very high in parts of the northern province of Cabo Delgado, but that can be explained by the war against islamist terrorism in the province. Ibo registered 194 per cent of its target, Mueda 152 per cent, Chiure 143 per cent and Pemba 113 per cent. These extra voters are not “ghost voters”, but are likely to be displaced people who fled into the municipalities to escape the terrorist raids in rural Cabo Delgado.
(AIM)
Pf/ (344)