
Um aspecto da votacao na cidade de Maputo. Foto de Ferhat Momade
Maputo, 10 Oct (AIM) – The Mozambican civil society election monitoring forum, the Sala da Paz (“Peace Room”), says that the count of votes cast in Wednesday’s presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections was damaged by poor lighting in many polling stations.
According to a Sala da Paz spokesperson, Felicidade Chirindza, speaking to reporters in Maputo, on Wednesday night, the organization observed 3.717 polling stations across the country.
“We verified, with some concern, the apparent lack of conditions for the counting of votes due to the insufficiency of light in various polling stations”, she said “There was poor lighting in 1,239 polling stations. In Sussundenga district, in the central province of Manica, in some polling stations there was no light. The same scenario was seen in the central city of Beira, at Manga Loforte Primary school, as well as in some polling stations in the central city of Chimoio”.
In such cases, the polling station staff switched to battery powered lamps. The opposition parties suspects that power cuts during the count are part of a scheme to commit fraud on behalf of the ruling Frelimo Party.
In previous elections it was believed that the power cuts were a normal phenomenon, and nothing to do with politics. After all, with or without elections, there were frequent power cuts.
But in recent years, the publicly-owned electricity company, EDM, has greatly improved its performance, and the number of power cuts has declined sharply. So it is certainly suspicious when the lights go out during an election count, particularly in major cities.
Chirindza said that many voters expressed their concern at irregularities and expressed their distrust of the election management bodies, particularly because many people, despite possessing valid voter cards, found that they could not vote because their names are not on the voters’ roll.
A sizeable number of voters disobeyed calls from the authorities to go home after voting. Instead they remained in the vicinity of the polling stations, supposedly “to control the vote”. Sala da Paz remarked that this shows “a significant part of the electorate does not trust the work of the electoral management bodies”.
In order to reverse the situation, Chirindza called on the electoral bodies to improve transparency mechanisms to reinforce voter trust.
“We call on electoral bodies and the police to adopt a pedagogical approach to avoid possible situations of violence”, she said. This time, however, there were no significant clashes between the police and groups of voters.
Chirindza also declared that some members of polling station staff (MMVs) were caught with extra ballot papers in an attempt to insert them into the ballot box during the closing phase of the voting, in the northern port city of Nacala.
According to Sala da Paz, at Nkobe Secondary School, in Maputo province, the count did not begin on time, because the MMVs were demanding payment in advance for their work.
(AIM)
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