Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Institute for Multiparty Democracy (IMD), a Mozambican NGO, has called on opposition parties to inspect the voter registration in order to avoid fraud.
According to the IMD director of programmes, Dércio Alfazema, cited in Thursday’s issue of the independent daily “O País”, the opposition parties are giving little importance to monitoring the registration, which opens a path for irregularities in the presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections scheduled for 9 October.
“The monitors from the political parties, who should make up the registration brigades, aren’t there. This means that they won’t have the legitimacy to protest at anything related to the voter registration”, Alfazema said.
He added that, instead of monitoring the process and surveying the difficulties and the irregularities that are happening, the parties are resolving their internal quarrels.
“There is a need for the parties to organize themselves so that they can monitor and supervise the process, starting with the registration”, he said.
Alfazema believes that these elections run the risk of being the least overseen by civil society organizations and specialized platforms due to lack of funds.
The secretary-general of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), the second largest opposition party in the country, Leonor de Sousa, believes that in the current registration, the intention of fraud is intensifying, since members of the ruling Frelimo party are being prioritised.
“I don’t know where we’re going to end up, because instead of changing for the better with our complaints, we’re always getting worse. There are constant breakdowns of the machines, and we deduce that these aren’t really breakdowns, they are situations provoked in order to make registration impossible. Especially when they know that an area is a stronghold of the opposition, then the machines don’t work”, she said.
For his turn, the spokesperson for the largest opposition party, Renamo, José Manteigas, said that his party is surveying the barriers to voter registration and will make a statement in due course.
For More News And Analysis About Mozambique Follow Africa-Press
