Thus the independent television station, STV, filmed an angry crowd of voters outside the Mungassa Primary School in the central city of Beira, where five polling stations should be operating. They were not open, and there was no sign of the polling station staff.
One man interviewed said the authorities were deliberately keeping these stations closed, because they knew that this area always votes for opposition parties. Some of the would-be voters said they had been waiting since 04.00 – and they were interviewed at 12.30. Nonetheless, they were determined to stay in the queue and vote.
A possible reason for the delays is that Beira polling station staff (known as MMVs) were still signing their contracts with the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) on Wednesday morning – precisely at the time they were supposed to be opening the polling stations.
The Beira STAE thus had not received, or was disregarding, an instruction from the National Elections Commission (CNE) that opening the polling stations must take priority, and the contracts could be signed in the evening or on Thursday. Polling stations in at least eight Beira schools had not opened by mid-morning.
A further major problem was that MMVs at some polling stations found the kits they were sent did not contain electoral registers, or had a register from the wrong area. When this happens, voting becomes impossible, because a sine qua non for anyone casting a ballot is that their names must be on the register.
According to the “Mozambican Political Process Bulletin”, published by AWEPA (European Parliamentarians for Africa), and by the anti-corruption NGO CIP (Centre for Public Integrity), 31 polling stations could not open in the northern city of Nacala because there were no registers.
At the town of Angoche, also on the northern coast, 10 stations did not open. Among the people unable to vote was the Angoche district administrator. STAE sent the voters home, with instructions to await developments.
At the Belenenses Primary School in Nampula city, seven out of the 14 polling stations that should have opened there remained closed because of the lack of registers. At the Muegane Primary School, also in Nampula, five out of 11 registers were missing. The “Bulletin” reports missing registers from at least another nine Nampula stations.
A further dramatic problem in Nampula is the failure, or refusal, to grant accreditation to hundreds of election observers. Over 400 observers from the Electoral Observatory, the largest and most credible of the national observer groups, did not receive their credentials, despite submitting the list of names to STAE last Thursday. According to the Observatory’s director, Rev. Anastacio Chembeze, speaking on a mid-morning radio programme, by then only 90 of the observers had received their credentials.
This effectively sabotages the Observatory’s plans to carry out a parallel count. The parallel count (or PVT – parallel vote tabulation) depends on a random selection of polling stations, properly reflecting the weight of the provincial constituencies and of urban and rural areas. Since Nampula is the largest of the constituencies, many of the 2,107 polling stations in the Observatory’s sample are in Nampula.
But without accreditation the observers cannot enter the polling stations. Even if STAE does now issue the credentials, it will be difficult for the observers to reach the more remote parts of the province in time for the count, which should begin immediately after close of polls at 18.00.
These problems add up to a massive indictment of STAE. In the last general elections, in 2009, the opposition claimed that similar difficulties were because STAE, although supposedly a non-partisan body, was acting at the behest of the ruling Frelimo Party.
The problem, they argued, could only be solved by putting opposition representatives into STAE. And this is precisely what was done under the amendments to the electoral legislation passed in February. At the demand of the former rebel movement Renamo, STAE was thoroughly politicised. There are literally thousands of staff appointed by Frelimo, Renamo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) inside STAE at all levels – central, provincial, district and city.
But this huge expansion of STAE, and the presence of so many opposition nominees, does not seem to have improved the organisation’s performance one iota. The new STAE seems just as capable of bungling and incompetence as the old one.
Post published in: Africa News