Voting orderly, but credibility of elections tainted, says EU Mission

Maputo, 11 Oct (AIM) –The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) on Friday praised Mozambique’s election management bodies for “conducting the voting in an orderly manner” in the general elections held on Wednesday.

But the Mission pointed out that the voting took place “in a context of public mistrust and tainted credibility of the electoral process”.

The mission deployed 179 observers who visited 729 polling stations in all 11 provinces and 78 districts.

Reading out the Mission’s preliminary assessment, the Chief Observer, Laura Ballarin, told a Maputo press conference that opposition parties “expressed lack of confidence in the impartiality and independence of the National Elections Commission (CNE) and the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE)”.

“There was a notable lack of confidence in the reliability of the electoral register”, added Ballarin, “given that in several provinces it reflected a higher number of voters than the overall population of voting age, derived from the national census”.

The targets for voter registration were based on the figures from the 2017 census conducted by the National Statistics Institute (INE). But the overall registration rate was 104 per cent of the INE’s figures. There was significant variation between the provinces, ranging from 86 per cent in Niassa to 150 per cent in Gaza.

Ballarin said the CNE “published only basic information on the number of registered voters per province. To the detriment of transparency, details such as the number of double registrations and steps taken to clean up the register were not made public”.

The election campaign was conducted peacefully, said Ballarin, and “fundamental freedoms were generally respected. No serious instances of inflammatory language was recorded”.

However, the observers “reported an evident tilting of the playing field in favour of the ruling party”, noting that Frelimo had abused state resources and personnel.

“Summoning of civil servants and teachers to participate in Frelimo campaign activities was reported in all provinces except Maputo City, Gaza and Manica”, Ballarin said.

Almost all the polling stations observed by the EU mission opened on time (at 07.00 on Wednesday), but the polling station staff (MMVs) were not always familiar with election procedures. The count of votes was slow and disorganized.

“There was a lack of clarity and integrity of the counting process”, said Ballarin.

The observers estimated that 14 out of the 74 counts observed “were seriously hampered by the poor lighting conditions”.

Ballarin added that the EU observers “reported stacks of folded ballot paper in ten counting processes followed, indicating possible ballot box stuffing. In one third of the counting processes observed, the figures in the protocols did not reconcile”.

The EU mission concluded by urging the CNE “to publish disaggregated electoral results by polling station for the sake of transparency”.
(AIM)
Pf/ (462)