Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Provincial Elections Commission (CPE) in the central Mozambican province of Zambezia has illegally denied credentials to allow correspondents of the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), to observe the voter registration in the province.
According to CIP, on Tuesday the CPE returned to CIP all the paperwork concerning the accreditation of its correspondents, alleging that the request must specify the districts in which they will work.
But the model of the CIP letter, sent to the Zambézia CPE, is the same as was used for all the other Provincial Elections Commissions, and for the National Elections Commission (CNE), most of which were successful and resulted in the issuing of credentials. For the other cases, there was no demand that CIP should specify the districts.
Indeed the electoral legislation is clear. It states that “the credential should mention the electoral constituency in which the observer will undertake his activity of election observation”.
For general elections, the constituency is not the district, but the province.
A CIP Wednesday release says “the constituency that will be the object of observation by CIP in Zambézia, is the province of Zambézia itself. So it makes no sense to demand of organisations that they indicate, at the level of the province, the district where they will observe. Apparently, the CPE Chairperson, Emílio Mpanga, is confusing general elections with municipal elections”.
CIP warns that “the decision by the Zambézia CPE may be deliberate, in order to delay still further the accreditation of observers and journalists. In last year’s municipal elections, Zambézia was one of the provinces where electoral fraud was committed in broad daylight”.
“During the municipal elections, in the same province, CIP faced the same difficulties: the credentials were only issued in the final days of the voter registration”, CIP adds. “History is repeating itself with the same actors”.
Although the requests for credentials were submitted in good time, “CIP has not yet been accredited in Niassa, Zambézia, Nampula and Maputo provinces. It has been partly accredited in Maputo city, and fully accredited in the remaining provinces (Gaza, Inhambane, Sofala, Manica, Tete and Cabo Delgado)”.
The only conceivable reason to deny credentials to credible, independent organisations is so that misconduct and fraud can be committed during the voter registration without being noticed.
Just like last year’s registration ahead of the municipal elections, this registration, ahead of the presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections is full of predictable problems which the electoral bodies have made little or no attempt to iron out.
From across the country come reports of repeated breakdowns and malfunctions of the equipment used for registration – the computers (known as Mobile-IDs) and the printers.
These problems were well known during last year’s registration. Since the end of the 2023 registration, the electoral bodies have had many months to check all the equipment, and to replace any Mobile-ID or printer found to be defective.
Yet this was clearly not done. No sooner had the registration began than the Mobile-IDs and printers began to malfunction. Either they had not been checked, or the breakdowns were a deliberate ploy to slow down registration.
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