Mozambique: MISA warns that journalists should not be partisan in election campaign
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The spokesperson for Mozambique’s Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), Claudio Langa, on Tuesday admitted that the current voter registration exercise is not reaching its targets.
Speaking at a Maputo press briefing, Langa said the target is for each registration brigade to register between 50 and 56 voters a day. Many brigades are falling short of this target.
One of the problems, Langa said, was absenteeism by brigade members who would leave the registration posts during working hours (07.30 to 16.00). These absences meant that sometimes posts did not open until 10.30.
Each brigade is supposed to have three members. But at some posts, the brigade members reached an agreement whereby only one stayed on duty while the others left to attend to personal matters.
There were also problems with the equipment. In some cases, according to a report in Wednesday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Mediafax”, the generators used issued a current so feeble that it was impossible to switch on the computers at the registration post. In other cases, the electrical current was too strong, and burnt out components.
As for the police who are supposed to be guarding the registration posts, Langa said some of them arrived for their duties completely drunk.
“When brigade members absent themselves, we can take administrative measures”, said Langa (he was not specific, but the most obvious measure would be to cut their wages). “But when policemen turn up drunk, we are limited to reporting the case to the relevant authorities, so that they may take measures”.
The registration is ahead of the municipal elections scheduled for 10 October, and so it is only taking place in those districts where there are municipalities. Based on figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE), the target for the registration is 8.064 million votes (and not the earlier estimate of 8.5 million).
As of last Sunday, the brigades had registered 1,443,328 voters – or 17.9 per cent of the target. The worst performance was from municipalities in the northern province of Niassa where only 11.73 per cent of the target had registered. The southern province of Gaza, however, had reached 25.6 per cent of its target.
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