Maputo, 24 Apr (AIM) – The Mozambican government has decided to extend the period of voter registration ahead of the presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections scheduled for 9 October, in Quissanga district, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, as a result of the extreme violence carried out by Islamist terrorists in some regions of that province.
Voter registration is a pre-requisite for voting, and, after jihadist bands swept through the district, currently no registration posts are open in Quissanga.
According to the government spokesperson and Deputy Minister of State Administration, Inocencio Impissa, who was speaking to reporters on Tuesday after the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers (Cabinet), the voter registration period has also been extended for Mozambican citizens living in neighbouring Tanzania.
As a result, Quissanga will carry out voter registration from scratch between 1 and 15 May. Everywhere else in the country, the voter registration period is scheduled to end on 28 April. In Tanzania, registration will be extended until 5 May.
Impissa guaranteed that the minimum conditions are already in place to carry out the voter registration in Quissanga safely.
“Yes, the conditions do exist, which is why the government has given the green light to go ahead”, he said.
With regard to Tanzania, Mozambique’s National Elections Commission (CNE) also acknowledged that it was facing some constraints, and so the registration began nine days late.
The CNE explained that the equipment arrived late in Tanzania because the aircraft carrying the material was held up in Addis Ababa. There are currently few direct cargo flights from Addis Ababa to Dar es Salaam.
The latest figures from the CNE show that in the diaspora, with the exception of Tanzania, voter registration is running smoothly, with 85.31 percent of the target having been reached, i.e. of the 279,685 voters expected, 238,587 voters have already been registered.
But inside the country, despite the CNE’s habitual optimism, it is not only Quissanga that faces problems. In a second Cabo Delgado district, Chiure, the CNE’s executive body, the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), was forced to evacuate the registration brigades because of terrorist raids.
Last week, the brigades stationed in the Mazeze administrative post were evacuated to Chiure town. On Tuesday morning, the jihadists attacked Mecolene village in the Chiure-Velho administrative posts, and again the brigades were evacuated. It is not clear when the voter registration in these parts of Chiure will resume.
Large numbers of posts are out of operation, with the machines necessary for registration out of order. Observers of the civil society coalition “Mais Integridade” (“More integrity”) visited 1,792 registration posts in the week 14 – 20 April and found that 234 were not functioning – which is 12% of the registration posts.
The greatest problem was with the printers, with 112 of them not working, in the registration posts observed.
The observers reported that 77 mobile IDs (the registration computers) were not working, many due to a lack of electricity. The problem of electricity was often due to bad weather, rainfall and cloudy skies. The solar panels were not able to accumulate sufficient energy.
The observers also reported that 44 posts were not functioning because they did not have voter cards or registration forms, and in 16 posts the camera was not working
(AIM)
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