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Mozambique: Voter Registration Beset With Problems
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
1 October 2007
Posted to the web 1 October 2007
Maputo
A week after the start of voter registration ahead of Mozambique's January elections for provincial assemblies, the process remains mired in problems to do with the shortage of computer equipment, and the apparent unreliability of those computers that have arrived.
Each of the 3,242 registration brigades should be equipped with a portable computer, a digital camera, a scanner, a printer, a digital reader to take voters' fingerprints, as well as a battery and a small generator.
But by the time voter registration started, on 24 September, only about 400 computers had arrived in the country from the South African firm that won the tender to supply the materials. More have subsequently arrived, and the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the civil service, promises to send them immediately to the registration posts.
But even where the equipment is available, it suffers "systematic breakdowns", according to a report in Monday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", which sent reporters around registration brigades in the capital at the weekend.
Queues build up at registration posts, the paper said, becuase of breakdowns, and because the brigades are experiencing great difficulty in handling unfamiliar machines. The brigade members complain that they were not properly trained in handling this equipment (doubtless because so few of the computers were in the country when the training took place in early September).
Registering each voter is taking far too long. Natividade Angelica, supervisor of a registration post set up in a school on the outskirts of Maputo, said "It's going slowly. We're taking between 10 and 20 minutes to register one person, when it should take one to two minutes". That meant people were obliged to spend hours in the queue, and the post stayed upon well beyond its theoretical closing time of 17.30.
One 18 year old would-be voter told "Noticias" that he had spent an hour and a half in the queue, and then a further 30 minutes being registered.
At a second school, the supervisor, Ivone dos Santos, complained of severe computer problems. "The machine takes a long time to start, and even after it's running, it constantly gives an error reading when we input the digital record of voters' fingerprints.
When that happens the solution is to switch the computer off, and then it's a headache to start it up again".
These signs of a badly planned operation "happen in full view of the voter, who often gives up", said dos Santos.
But "Noticias" could find some brigades where the registration was taking place smoothly. At a post in the neighbourhood of Lhanguene, the computers were working properly, the brigade members were able to handle them correctly, and it only took two or three minutes to register each voter. But this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
Based on very preliminary figures from the August population census, AIM calculates the potential electorate (Mozambicans aged 18 and above) at about 10.3 million. To register 85 per cent of them (the success rate achieved in the 1999 registration) will require each brigade to register an average of 45 people a day.
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But when brigades are unable to register anybody because the equipment has not arrived, or are working at a snail's pace because of breakdowns, or inability to handle the machines, then this target slips out of reach.
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| Copyright © 2007 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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