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Mozambique: Floods Hinder Voter Registration
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
16 January 2008
Posted to the web 16 January 2008
Maputo
As feared, the floods in central Mozambique are hindering the work of voter registration brigades, who find that they cannot use vehicles to carry their equipment to the registration posts because the roads are impassable.
This second and final phase of voter registration, ahead of the country's third municipal elections, is scheduled to run from 15 January to 15 March.
Lucas Jose, head of the press office of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the Mozambican civil service, told AIM that, when voter registration was interrupted on 15 December, all the computers, printers, digital cameras and other equipment were stored in STAE warehouses in the provincial capitals.
"It is not easy to put all this material back in the registration posts by normal means", admitted Jose. "Often we're using alternative means, including donkeys, to carry the material. Sometimes people just have to carry the materials themselves".
Jose could not say exactly how many of the 3,242 registration posts are affected by the flooding, which has affected the four main river valleys in central Mozambique - the Zambezi, the Pungue, the Save and the Buzi basins. Some of the areas cut off by road could, in theory, be reached by helicopter. But STAE does not have any helicopters, or the money to hire them.
Worse still, some of the registration posts in the river valleys, even if not under water, may have nobody to register, because over 60,000 people at risk have been evacuated to resettlement areas.
STAE had no contingency plans to set up extra registration posts in the resettlement areas - indeed Jose argues that STAE has no power to take such a decision. "The registration posts are in places determined in advance by the National Elections Commission (CNE)", he said. "We can't just set up registration posts as we like. The decision must be taken by the CNE, which decides whether there are enough potential voters in any place to justify this measure".
But not all STAE officials are prepared to wait for a CNE decision. The STAE director in the southern province of Inhambane, Rosa Macauze, told Radio Mozambique that, as from Thursday, two registration brigades will work in the centres set up for flood victims displaced from the town of Nova Mambone, in the Save valley.
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A similar decision is likely to be taken with regard to Machanga district, on the north bank of the Save, which has also been flooded.
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