allAfrica.com: Mozambique: Few Voters Registered, Admits STAE (Page 1 of 1)

The general director of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the Mozambican civil service, Felisberto Naife, has recognised that few voters are taking part in the current update of the electoral registers.

Speaking on Monday at a seminar for journalists on election coverage in the southern town of Namaacha, Naife said that the data from the first week of the update showed a poor attendance at the registration, although he claimed (without giving figures) that the situation had improved somewhat in the second week.

He was also pleased that a significant number of voters had gone to the registration brigades, not to register, but to demand corrections to mistakes in their voter cards, or to obtain a new card in cases where the old one had been lost or damaged. This he found "encouraging", since it meant that many citizens were now familiar with the voting requirements.

The updating of the registers began on 6 July, in all 43 cities and towns where municipal elections will be held on 19 November, and it is scheduled to end on 4 August. This registration exercise is aimed primarily at people who reach the voting age of 18 before the local elections. But voters who failed to register for any reason previously will be able to do so now.

The most likely reason why so few people are registering now is that the previous voter registration, from 24 September to 15 March, was extremely successful. This was the re-registration of the entire electorate, and it resulted in the registration of 8,926,647 voters - or 88.3 per cent of the estimated potential electorate of 10.2 million.

There really are not that many voters left to register. People who could not be bothered to register between September and March are rather unlikely to do so now.

The largest bloc of potential voters is those who turn 18 this year. From the 1997 population census we know that there are around 460,000 Mozambicans who celebrate their 18th birthday in 2008. But those born up to 15 March were able to register in the September-March registration, and those born after 19 November are not eligible to register.

Furthermore, only about 20 per cent of the 460,000 18 year olds will be living in the municipalities. These considerations make it clear that the STAE target of registering a further million voters this month was wildly unrealistic.

Naife also told the Namaacha seminar that preparations for the municipal elections are going ahead smoothly. He said that STAE is currently drawing up the documents for the tenders that will be launched soon for the acquisition of voting materials

The calendar for recruiting and training the polling station staff already exists, said Naife, and recruitment will begin within six weeks. This will ensure that there is adequate time to train all the staff.

The estimated budget for the municipal elections is 15 million dollars, and Naife said this money is guaranteed. "All phases of the process are covered", he declared.

Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the National Elections Commission (CNE), Juvenal Bucuane, has been visiting Maputo registration brigades and warning them against the fictitious transfer of voters from one constituency to another.

According to a report in Tuesday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", he warned that people living outside of the Maputo municipality might claim that they had changed address so as to ensure the right to vote in the local elections. He claimed that "some circles" were using these citizens to vote for their own interests on 19 November.

"The municipal elections are not happening everywhere in the country", he said. "This could work in favour of people of bad faith taking advantage of the situation to entice those who are not resident in the municipalities to register here".

They could be brought from some part of the country that is not a municipality into Maputo to vote on 19 November. So, in dealing with voters who were transferring their registration to Maputo, Juvane told the brigades to check on "the real situation" of such people.

Yet Bucuane gave no examples of anyone caught fraudulently transferring his or her registration. Of course, such fraudulent transfers are possible - but they require quite a lot of time-consuming work, first to obtain Maputo registration, and then to come into the city on 19 November and cast a vote.

Only two organisations have the resources and manpower to carry out such an ambitious fraud. One is the ruling Frelimo Party: but since it already has an overwhelming majority in Maputo, moving in additional voters from outside the city would be just a waste of time and money.

The second is the former rebel movement Renamo. Certainly Renamo would like some extra votes in Maputo, but where could it possibly find them? For all the non-municipal areas within a reasonable distance of Maputo vote even more heavily in favour of Frelimo than the capital does. The nearest Renamo-voting area is hundreds of kilometees to the north. So, even if it wanted to, Renamo has no way of moving significant numbers of its voters to Maputo, without incurring enormous expense.

Perhaps there are individuals living near Maputo, in Marracuene or Boane districts, who think it might be a clever idea to register falsely as Maputo residents in order to influence the election. But there are unlikely to be many of them, and, despite Bucuane's hectoring, there is not much the registration brigades can do. They certainly cannot waste their limited time checking the addresses of every voter.

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