STAE training polling station staff

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STAE training polling station staff

8:26 CAT | 10 Sep 2018

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Mozambique’s Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) intends to train over 42,000 candidates for positions manning the polling stations in the municipal elections scheduled for 10 October.

Speaking in the central city of Beira on Wednesday, at a national meeting of the electoral bodies, STAE general director Felisberto Naife said that the recruitment and selection of candidates is now under way, and the three parties represented in parliament – the ruling Frelimo Party, the former rebel movement Renamo, and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) – have been notified so that they can appoint their members of the polling station staff.

Each polling station should have seven members of staff – four of these are recruited by STAE through public tendering. But the other three are appointed by the political parties (this is in addition to the monitors whom the parties can have inside each station).

This measure, introduced in 2014, is supposed to be an additional check against fraud. Nonetheless, it did not stop Renamo from denouncing the 2014 general elections as entirely fraudulent, even though Renamo should have been present among the staff at every one of the polling stations.

The current legislation places political party appointees at every rung of the electoral apparatus, from the polling stations right up to the National Elections Commission (CNE) and the top management of STAE. But this dominance by the parties, looking over each other’s shoulders, has not reduced accusations of fraud or made it any easier to run elections.

Cited by Radio Mozambique, Naife also declared that the production of the voter rolls for each polling station is well advanced. “There are various challenges, but we are at an advanced stage of producing these voter registers”, he said. “We are also sharing the voter rolls with the competing parties, coalitions and citizens’ groups”.

But there are fears that the elections will be marred by high levels of abstention. According to a report in the Maputo daily “Noticias”, many potential voters are puzzled by the term “head of the list”.

Thanks to negotiations between the government and the rebel movement Renamo earlier this year, the format for municipal elections has been dramatically changed. In the previous four rounds of local elections (in 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013), there were two ballot papers, one for the Mayor and one for the municipal assembly.

But under the new legislation, the direct election of mayors has been abolished. There will only be one ballot paper, for the municipal assembly, and voters will face a list of names of parties, coalitions and citizens’ groups, each putting forward a list of candidates. The man who is “head of the list” (“cabeca da lista”) of the party or group with the largest number of votes automatically becomes mayor.

This is quite alien to an electorate which has become used to voting directly for mayors. Even in Maputo, the STAE voter education brigades have found that many citizens do not know what the term “head of the list” means.

To make matters worse, it seems that the ballot papers will only contain the names and symbols of the parties, without the name and portrait of the “head of the list”.

The Human Rights and Legality Observatory (ODHL), a coalition of NGOs, has warned that a lack of knowledge about the changes to the electoral laws could keep citizens away from the polling stations.

ODHL spokesperson and specialist in electoral law, Guilherme Mbilana, cited by the Radio, warned that, after the approval of the new law there was not enough time to publicise it among the public.

Currently the parties are introducing the heads of their lists to the voters – but Mbilana pointed out that, if voters expect to see a photo of these candidates on their ballot papers, they will be disappointed. He feared that such factors could lead to high rates of abstention.

Source: AIM