Mozambique: Brigades fail do display voter rolls – AIM report

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Mozambique: Brigades fail do display voter rolls – AIM report

10:29 CAT | 09 Jun 2023

File photo: Conselho Cristão Moçambique

Many of Mozambique’s voter registration brigades are defying the country’s electoral legislation by failing to display the voter rolls for public inspection.

Once registration was finished, last Saturday night, the brigades should have printed out the lists of names of registered voters. These registration books should then have gone on display at the registration posts, thus allowing registered voters to check that they are on the list, and that their names are correctly written.

If, for whatever reason, a voter’s name has been left off the register, he will not be able to vote in the municipal elections scheduled for 11 October.

The public display of the registers is thus a useful check on the accuracy of the work of the registration brigades. Failure to display the registers sends a signal that the brigades have something to hide.

The registers should have gone on display at every registration post in the country at 08.00 on Monday. They should be displayed for just four days – Thursday is the last day on which voters will be able to visit the registration posts and check that their names are on the register.

But correspondents for the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), and observers from the “Mais Integridade” (“More Integrity”) civil society consortium, found that many registration brigades had not displayed their registers. Thus on Monday observers from “Mais Integridade” visited 138 registration posts, and found that 25 had defied instructions from the National Elections Commission (CNE) by simply not opening, while in a further 31 there were no registers on display.

There was an alarming geographical disparity. In the southern provinces, regarded as strongholds of the ruling Frelimo Party, all the posts visited were displaying the register, but there were serious problems in the centre and north, particularly in Zambezia, Nampula and Niassa provinces.

Not only were the registers not on display, but many of the voters in these areas had not yet received their voter cards. Immediately on registering, the voters should have received their cards – but using supposed printer malfunctions as the excuse, in many cases voters did not receive the cards, and were told to come back tomorrow.

Four days after the end of registration, many voters were still without their cards. Voters should show their cards, as proof of registration, at the polling stations on 11 October.

In several posts, when CIP asked why the registers were not on display, brigade members said they had received no instructions from their supervisors to display them.

But this should not be a matter for “instructions”. The public display of the registers is a legal requirement, and anybody who obstructs this is violating the electoral legislation.

Repeatedly, observers were told that the printers had broken down. Yet the printers were obtained from a supposedly reputable company, which supplies the same equipment to 160 other countries.

As of Wednesday, it was still impossible for voters to consult the registers in many posts. Unless STAE (Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat) makes a determined effort to ensure that all posts are fully operational and displaying their registers on Thursday, many voters will be unable to check whether their names are on the lists.

Source: AIM