Mozambique: Authority wants increased security in Cabo Delgado for 2023 and 2024 elections – Watch

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: Authority wants increased security in Cabo Delgado for 2023 and 2024 elections – Watch

4:34 CAT | 17 Oct 2022

The president of Mozambique’s National Elections Commission (CNE) on Friday called for the reinforcement of security in the northern province of Cabo Delgado in order to hold local elections in 2023 and general elections in 2024.

“The work that has already been done at a local level indicates that conditions exist for the holding of elections, but it is necessary to have reinforced security,” said Carlos Matsinhe.

Matsinhe was speaking on the sidelines of the swearing-in ceremony of the new director-general of the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE), Loló Correia.

The president of CNE also noted the need for electoral logistics adapted to the context of infrastructure destruction caused by more than five years of attacks by armed groups.

“The reconstruction of infrastructures in Cabo Delgado will still take time, even if there is definitive stability,” he noted.

In this sense, electoral bodies should carry out “effective planning of the impact” of carrying out voter registration in February 2023 for the municipal elections on 11 October next year, he added.

In the investiture speech of the new STAE director-general, the CNE president had already pointed out the need to “find efficient strategies” so that the next electoral cycle also covers the districts beset by violence, in view of the gradual improvement in security conditions.

Matsinhe called on Loló Correia to also take into account the obstacles imposed on electoral operations by natural disasters and the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We recommend that he be guided by a high sense and commitment to transparency and accountability of the body he will lead in all acts of his intervention,” he said.

The new director-general of STAE, a senior technician in information and communication technologies, is the first in the post to be selected through public tender and replaces Felisberto Naife, who stepped down from the post after 15 years.

Mozambique enters a new electoral cycle in 2023, with local elections taking place that year and general elections (presidential, legislative, provincial and district) in 2024.

The holding of the first district elections in 2024 is in doubt, following repeated calls by the country’s president, Filipe Nyusi, for reflection on their viability in view of what are already the current decentralised bodies.

Cabo Delgado province is rich in natural gas but has been terrorised since 2017 by armed violence, with some attacks claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.

The insurgency has led to a military response since a year ago with support from Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), liberating districts near gas projects, but new waves of violence have emerged south of the region and in neighbouring Nampula province.

In five years, the conflict has left one million people displaced, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and around 4,000 dead, according to the ACLED conflict registration project.

Watch the Miramar report.