Africa-Press – Mozambique. Josina Machel Secondary School, in the centre of Maputo, became too small this morning for the turnout of hundreds of voters for the local elections, with long queues, lots of expectations and a certainty that they would follow voting day at home.
“I’m going to wait until the end, I have to stay because if it’s not now, it never will be again. I have to stay until the end,” Aurélio Ncomacha, 35, one of the 3,308 voters registered to vote today at the five polling stations set up at the school in the municipal district of Kampfumu, told Lusa.
A lawyer by profession, he arrived at around 7.30 a.m. (one hour less in Lisbon) and had to queue for an hour before he could vote, but he was still “patient” and convinced of the importance of the moment: “I have good expectations, I hope everything goes well”.
The vote to choose the mayors of the 65 municipalities will take place until 6 p.m. (5 p.m. in Lisbon) on what would be a normal working day in the country, but with all commerce and institutions in the capital closed and with official appeals to voters not to stay at polling stations after the vote, while the opposition is calling for the opposite, alleging fears of electoral fraud.
“I’m going to go home, stay with my family and watch the elections on TV,” said Aurelio.
Simão and René Mucavel, two brothers, turned up to vote at 7 a.m. at the same school and also faced the queue to receive their ballot papers, similar to other polling stations in Maputo city.
“I hope the elections are peaceful and orderly and that everything goes well. That people can exercise their civic duty,” said Simão, 22, a final year law student who will spend the rest of the day divided between his studies and the television to follow the elections.
“We decided to do it together, in the early hours, to avoid the hustle and bustle of the last few hours at the end of the day,” explained his brother René, 33 and a manager, without hiding his expectations for the day.
“I hope it’s first and foremost a moment of celebration, of exercising our citizenship, and that we can consciously exercise our civic right and choose our representatives for the next five years,” he said.
For René, who also has a degree in Political Science, the “massive turnout” at the polls deserves a “positive note” as it “demonstrates” that “there is more and more awareness” in Mozambique about rights and duties.
He confesses that after 30 minutes of waiting in the queue, it’s time to go home and watch the elections on television, just like Josina Cossa. The 53-year-old human resources manager also braved the queue to vote at 7 a.m. at the school, hoping for an election that chooses people with “wisdom to lead Maputo”.
“May each of us exercise our right to vote consciously,” she said, assuming that the turnout shows that people “realise that they have a responsibility in this process”.
Throughout the city of Maputo, 197 polling stations have been set up for these elections, but Josina Machel Secondary School was also the polling station for the president of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, who was the first to vote, praising the “example of Mozambicans” on his way out and once again comparing today’s vote to a football match, where the winner is only known at the end of the game.
“You report on the matches. Normally when Ferroviário, Maxaquene, Costa do Sol, Baía [Mozambican clubs] play, you report on them, as does Sporting in Portugal when they play Benfica. I’ve never heard it said that before the 90 minutes are up that Benfica won, it’s Baía who has won. Wait until the 90 minutes are up, the final whistle, to announce victory,” he told reporters.
According to voter registration data, 8,723,805 voters are registered in all the country’s districts with local authorities and 4,817,712 voters in the districts with local authorities.
Mozambican voters are being asked to choose 65 new presidents of municipal councils and elected members of municipal assemblies, including 12 new municipalities approved by the Council of Ministers in October 2022, in addition to 53 existing ones, totalling 1,747 members to be elected.
More than 11,500 candidates from 11 political parties, three coalitions of parties and eight citizens’ groups are running in the local elections, and the National Electoral Commission has determined 1,486 Polling Station locations and 6,875 polling stations.
In the 2018 municipal elections, the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo, in power) won in 44 of the 53 municipalities and the opposition in only nine, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) in eight and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) in one.
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