Africa-Press – Mozambique. The leader of the Mozambique MDM party, the third largest in parliament, has expressed its dissatisfaction with what it says are anomalies in the registration of voters for October’s local elections, in a meeting with the country’s president, Filipe Nyusi.
“We took the opportunity [in the meeting with the president] to express our concern about the way voter registration was conducted,” the MDM leader, Lutero Simango, said moments after being received by head of state.
At issue are complaints from opposition political parties about alleged anomalies in voter registration, which was carried out between 20 April and 3 June, accusing Frelimo, the governing party at national level, of having manipulated the operation.
“We have presented two concrete examples: the example of the director of the Technical Secretariat of Electoral Administration in Beira [suspended after alleged electoral malpractices that harmed the opposition] and also the disproportionate distribution of voter registration posts,” Simango recalled.
Mozambique registered more than 8 million voters for the local elections scheduled for 11 October, the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE) announced after the completion of the process, which has been heavily criticised by the opposition and civil society organisations monitoring elections in Mozambique.
Besides voter registration, Simango and Nyusi addressed other issues of major interest, with a focus on terrorism in the northern province of Cabo Delgado and the closure last week of the last base of the armed wing of Renamo, the country’s largest opposition party, in Gorongosa, in the central province of Sofala, as part of peace agreements between it and the Frelimo government.
“We took notes on his [Lutero Simango’s] suggestions and it was also an opportunity for us to explain some things about these processes,” said Nyusi in brief comments to the media after his meeting with the MDM leader. “Good ideas have no political colours; I said that in 2015 and these ideas emerged here.”
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