Nampula by-election: Campaign running smoothly – AIM report

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Nampula by-election: Campaign running smoothly – AIM report

7:00 CAT | 15 Jan 2018

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The Nampula District Elections Commission considers that the initial days of the campaign for the mayoral by-election in the northern Mozambican municipality of Nampula have been orderly and peaceful.

The Commission’s chairperson, Martinho Marcelino, told AIM that the only problem noted so far was the flyposting of election propaganda in inappropriate places.

“We received complaints and we noted on the ground that posters for the various candidates have been stuck on the walls of churches, schools and health centres, which clearly violates the code of conduct”, he said. “We called the election agents, and instructed them to remove the posters, which is happening”.

One of these cases involved posters for Amisse Cololo, candidate of the ruling Frelimo Party, which were posted on the wall of the residence of the Catholic Archbishop of Nampula. The archdiocese protested and Marcelino said Frelimo has been told to remove the posters.

“The party’s election agent has been asked to take the posters down, because the rules are there to be complied with”, he said.

Meanwhile, the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the executive wing of the electoral commissions, says that on Thursday it made the electoral registers available for consultation by the voters.

The STAE Nampula director, Evaristo Vetela, told AIM “As from today and until 21 January (three days before the election) any citizen who has lost his or her voter card can go to the places where they registered and recover their voter number. They will then be able to exercise their citizenship rights on 24 January”.

This followed protests by opposition parties that the electoral registers drawn up for the by-election were full of mistakes. It is hard to see how this occurred since, in principle, the registers should be exactly the same as the ones used in the 2014 general elections.

The chairperson of the National Elections Commission (CNE), Abdul Carimo, intervened and ordered the scrapping of the new registers and a return to the 2014 documents.

Also Read: Nampula: MDM member killed on first day of election campaigning

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Nampula election: Catholic Church protests – AIM report

However, when reporters from the independent newsheet “Mediafax” visited several polling stations on Thursday, they found that Carimo’s promise had not yet been implemented, and there was no sign of the registers.

The polling stations are, in principle, at the same places (usually schools) where citizens registered as voters. Some people went to the stations on Thursday, hoping to check that their names were in the registers, only to find that the registers were not yet on display.

Also Read: Criticism and accusations mark the beginning of by-election campaign

Blunders in Nampula registers blamed on “technical mistakes”

INGC denies providing drones to Frelimo’s election campaign in Nampula city

Source: AIM