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Mozambique Elections: STAE in Gaza set to register “305,000 ghost voters”, CIP says
8:28 CAT | 24 May 2023
File photo: Notícias
“Once again, the STAE in Gaza is not using the forecasts issued by the National Institute of Statistics,” the CIP says.
The Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), a Mozambican non-governmental organisation, accused the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE) this Monday of intending to register “305,000 ghost voters” in Gaza province for the October municipal elections.
“It seems that the soap opera will repeat itself: the INE [National Institute of Statistics] foresees the registration of 517,000 potential voters, but the STAE in Gaza is projecting the registration of 822,000,” the CIP says in a bulletin published yesterday on voter registration in Gaza province, in the south of the country.
The non-governmental organisation (NGO) is among several which has deployed observers to voter registration posts, open from April 20th to June 3rd.
“Once again, Gaza’s STAE is not using the forecasts issued by the National Institute of Statistics,” which conducts demographic studies, but is instead using “its own projections, used in the 2019 elections”, the NGO alleges.
In 2019, the then-president of the INE, Rosário Fernandes, said she considered the numbers of voters registered by electoral bodies in Gaza, a stronghold of the ruling party Frelimo, to be inflated.
Fernandes resigned some time later, after a public reprimand by President Nyusi.
Regardless of opposition from civil society organisations and analysts, Filipe Nyusi accused the INE and Rosário Fernandes of wanting to “shine alone”, by publicly presenting data and projections of the population of Gaza that contradicted those of the electoral bodies.
READ: Mozambique: Respected statistics head forced out over Gaza by vitriolic Nyusi – By Joseph Hanlon
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According to the CIP, the situation is repeating itself, and the opposition complains that it is not getting access to the numbers of registered voters in the province.
That NGO says it contacted the provincial director of STAE in Gaza, Mário Cossane, for comment on the matter, but the person in charge declined to speak. Nor did Lusa secure any reaction to the CIP accusation from the electoral bodies.
The next municipal elections in Mozambique are scheduled for October 11, and electoral bodies expect around 10 million voters to register.
Source: Lusa
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