Mozambique: MDM claims fake municipal workers are registering

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Mozambique: MDM claims fake municipal workers are registering

8:53 CAT | 24 Apr 2023

Photo: O País

Lutero Simango, the leader of Mozambique’s second largest opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), on Saturday claimed that people with no right to vote in the 11 October municipal elections are registering as voters.

Simango told reporters of his fears after he and his wife had registered as voters in a central Maputo registration post.

He claimed that “immigrant voters are appearing, and this is serious. Each person should register in their own municipality, and nobody should travel from a non-municipal area to a municipality, to become an immigrant voter and later sell their voter card”.

This accusation seems to arise from the fact that the current registration covers all voters living in districts which contain municipalities. In some cases, the municipal and district boundaries are exactly the same. But other districts contain a municipal area, where local elections will be held on 11 October, and non-municipal areas, where they will not.

The election bodies took the decision long ago to register all citizens living in districts containing municipalities, and since the MDM is represented on the election bodies, Simango should have known that.

People in non-municipal areas who register will not be able to use their voter card in the municipal elections– but they will be able to use the card in the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2024.

A voter card is required to vote in the municipal elections, but it is not sufficient. The voter’s name must be on the register in the polling station where he or she intends to vote, and this will not be the case with the “migrant voters” frightening Simango.

The MDM leader also complained of “favoritism” at the registration posts, allowing Frelimo members to jump the queues.

“We urge STAE (Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat) to take its responsibility with impartiality”, said Simango. “All citizens who want to register should join the queues and not benefit from the privilege of belonging to a particular political party”.

However, the main complaint reaching reporters, from across the country, is not of queue jumping, but of the slow processing of voters.

To register a voter and issue his or her voter card should only take a few minutes, but there are reports of posts where the brigades were taking half an hour or more to register a single voter.

This seems to be the result of inadequate training of the brigade members, who are unfamiliar with the computers and printers used for registration (although they are the same as those used in the last local elections, in 2018).

Source: AIM