The printers had caused major headaches all over the country, with registration brigades finding it impossible to print out voter cards. The Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) demanded that the consortium which won the tender for providing registration materials should replace the printers, and new ones were imported from South Africa.
The bulletin’s correspondents reported that most posts in the municipalities in Manica, Inhambane, Nampula and Niassa provinces had opened. In Macia municipality, in Gaza province, all registration posts were working normally on Saturday morning, and the time taken to register a voter had fallen to five minutes.
But there were still municipalities where some posts had not yet reopened by Monday morning. These included Lichinga (Niassa province), Ribaue (Nampula), Vilankulo (inhambane) and Manjacaze (Gaza).
In Maputo and the neighbouring city of Matola some registration brigades reported continuing software problems, the “Bulletin” said, including multiple printing of voter cards, or cards printed with the voter’s photo in the wrong place.
The consortium that won the tender consists of the Mozambican company Artes Grafica (part of the Academica Group) and the South African company Lithotech. According to a report in Monday’s issue of the independent daily “O Pais”, the consortium received 544.1 million meticais (about 18.1 million US dollars) from STAE for the supply of the registration equipment.
Under the contract, the consortium was to supply STAE with 1,700 kits of equipment ahead of this year’s municipal elections, and a further 2,500 next year, ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections. Each kit consists of a computer, a camera and a printer with toner.
Meanwhile the European Union has been forced to deny claims made in the newsletter “Correio de Manha” on Friday, and repeated on Monday by another electronic paper “CanalMoz”, according to which the EU has threatened that it will not finance elections until there is an agreement between the government and the main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo. This was reported as a Renamo diplomatic triumph.
But the story was not only false but lazy, since a minimum of investigation would have told “Correio de Manha” that there were never any plans for the EU to finance the municipal elections.
The EU pointed out that it is not funding the elections, and has no plans to do so. These elections are being financed out of Mozambique’s own state budget, in line with a longstanding government promise to reduce dependence on foreign donors for Mozambique’s own democratic processes.
Post published in: Africa News