Africa-Press – Mozambique. To date, Mozambique’s National Elections Commission (CNE) has nowhere near enough money to run the general elections scheduled for October.
The presidential and parliamentary elections and the elections for the ten provincial assemblies will take place simultaneously on 9 October.
Speaking at a Maputo press conference on Thursday, CNE spokesperson Paulo Cuinica said the budget for the elections, including voter registration, is slightly less than 20 billion meticais (about 312.2 million US dollars, at the current exchange rate).
The government has so far disbursed about 6.6 million meticais – which is only 33 per cent of the amount needed.
Cuinica announced that the CNE expects there will be 16.4 million voters registered for the October elections, of whom 279,600 will be in the diaspora.
He said that this year only 7.7 million voters will be registered, since 8,723,805 voters were already registered in 2023, prior to the municipal elections of 11 October.
Voter registration for the population of voting age will take place between 15 March and 28 April in all the districts that do not contain municipalities. Over the same period, the voter rolls in the districts with municipalities will be updated, for those citizens who were too young to register in 2023, those who have lost their voter cards, and those who have changed address.
In the disapora, registration will occur between 30 March and 28 April. This registration covers only nine countries with a sizeable Mozambican community. They are: South Africa, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Portugal and Germany.
In order to carry out voter registration, 6,330 brigades will be set up, of which 6,033 will operate inside the country and 297 abroad. There will be 9,165 voter registration posts – 8,774 inside Mozambique and 391 in the diaspora.
Cuinica announced that all the equipment needed for voter registration is already in the provinces.
All potential voters are registered using “Mobile ID” computers. Where electricity is not available, solar panels are being distributed. There should be one Mobile ID for each registration brigade.
Of the 7,092 Mobile IDs, 3,192 were used in the 2023 municipal elections and the rest are brand new.
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