24 January 2008
Maputo — Nine days after the start of the second phase of voter registration in Mozambique, many registration posts have yet to resume work, the general director of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the civil service, Felisberto Naife, admitted on Thursday.
Naife told AIM that in most of these cases, the computers and other equipment essential for registering voters had not arrived at the posts because roads are impassable due to torrential rains and flooding.
Currently there is no overland access to substantial areas of the Zambezi, Pungue, Buzi and Save valleys in central Mozambique.
Taking the district of Chinde, in Zambezia province, as an example, Naife said that, of the 38 registration brigades that should be operating there, 18 have yet to start work.
He added that there are cases where the brigades have set up the registration posts, but there are no voters to register, because the people have all been evacuated from areas deemed at risk of flooding.
The problem here is that the list of registration posts was approved by the National Elections Commission (CNE) last year, and STAE cannot change it. It would make eminent sense to move at least some of the Zambezi valley registration brigades into the resettlement areas for flood victims set up by the government. But this is a decision that can only be taken by the CNE.
Naife said that STAE has been working hard on the logistics, trying to ensure that all the brigades can operate. He claimed some successes, pointing out that a few days ago none of the 38 Chinde brigades were working.
The first phase of voter registration ran from 24 September to 15 December, and the brigades managed to register 7.6 million out of an estimated electorate of 10.14 million.
STAE insists that it will make every effort to register all the remaining 2.5 million voters. However, no country ever manages to register 100 per cent of its potential electorate. The last time there was a full registration of the Mozambican electorate was in 1999, when 7.1 million people obtained voter cards: this was an estimated 85 per cent of the potential electorate of the time. To achieve 85 per cent this time would require registering 8.62 million people.
The first phase of registration was plagued with computer problems. The computers, provided by the Mozambican group Insitec, which won the tender for the registration materials, arrived late, and suffered repeated breakdowns (many of which were probably due to the inexperience of the brigade members who had never handled digital equipment before).
But Naife is convinced that the technical problems have been overcome. In the current phase, he said, STAE is much better prepared, and has technical staff at hand to intervene speedily in the event of any computer breakdowns.
Spare parts are available, he said, "and we have people on the ground in each of the country's districts to solve problems".
In a sharp contract to the first phase, there had been no reports of any brigades forced to stop work because of computer problems.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 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.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
