
Maputo, 9 Oct (AIM) – Lutero Simango, the leader and presidential candidate of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), on Wednesday accused the election management bodies of refusing to allow MDM monitors to attend the polling stations.
Speaking to reporters immediately after he had cast his vote, Simango said the refusal to allow MDM delegates into the polling stations is a violation of the election law, and could be a prelude to election fraud.
“What we want is for the elections to take place in a transparent and fair manner”, he said. “The refusal to allow MDM members to attend the polling stations and the refusal to grant credentials to our monitors just smells of fraud”.
“In the coming hours, I will personally visit all the polling stations in Maputo city, to check for sure whether our members are there”, Simango declared.
Meanwhile, despite the optimism expressed by the National Elections Commission (CNE), by no means all the polling stations opened on time, at 07.00. Stations in the central province of Zambezia could not all open on time, because of delays in placing the election materials (such as polling booths, ballot boxes and ballot papers) in all the stations.
These delays are the result of polling station staff (MMVs) dropping out. An official from the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) told the independent television station “TV Sucesso” that he did not know why MMVs had not gone to the polling stations, and claimed that urgent work was under way to solve the problem,
“We need to check the lists and find the real number of MMVs who have dropped out, so that they can be replaced by their substitutes”, he said. “We don’t yet know the real reasons for these young people dropping out”.
Protests over money could well be at the root of the problem. Across the country, discontented MMVs have been demanding higher payment for the few days they will be at the polling stations.
But the STAE official pointed out that “at no moment do the trainees receive money before the elections are over”.
Another problem in Zambezia is that voter rolls have gone to the wrong polling stations. “TV Sucesso” noted that the lists of voters who ought to cast their ballots at polling stations in the Quelimane Higher School of Marine Sciences, have ended up in the neighbourhood of Inhangoma.
This problem is recurrent in Mozambican elections, and it is hard to know whether it is deliberate fraud or simple incompetence.
(AIM)
Pf/ (424)