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Mozambique: Frelimo Committing Fraud in Beira, Renamo Claims
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
23 July 2008
Posted to the web 23 July 2008
Maputo
Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, has claimed that the ruling Frelimo Party is infiltrating supporters from other parts of the country into the central city of Beira, in order to boost Frelimo's vote there in the municipal elections scheduled for 19 November.
According to a report in Wednesday's issue of the independent newsheet "Mediafax", the Renamo spokesperson in Beira, Geraldo Carvalho, said that Renamo has lodged a complaint with the National Elections Commission (CNE), with evidence backing up its claims.
The claim is that 62 people were recruited in other parts of Sofala province, mostly in the districts of Cheringoma and Chemba, supposedly to take part in a Frelimo meeting in Beira. They traveled in two minibuses hired by local Frelimo leaders in those districts, arriving in Beira at around 23.30 on Monday night.
The following morning they were taken, not to any meeting, but to various voter registration posts in the city, where they were instructed to register fraudulently as voters resident in Beira so that they would be able to vote in Beira in November.
"We managed to locate them at the registration posts", said Carvalho. In three posts, Renamo found "7 people who were already in possession of voters' cards. When we asked them, some said they had been collected in their districts to attend a meeting of veterans of the independence war in Beira. They said they didn't know they had come to be registered as voters. We sent these people to the police, who just took their names and released them".
Two of these would-be Beira voters were interviewed by the private television station STV, essentially confirming this story. They also spoke to the pro-Renamo newsheet "Canal de Mocambique", which clamed that the transport to Beira was provided, not be Frelimo, but by the Provincial Finance Directorate.
These two men, 24 year old Antonio Virgilio and 58 year old Mouzinho Mazoca, both said they were members of Frelimo and lived in Cheringoma. They said they had been told they were going to a veterans' meeting - although Virgilio was born a decade after the independence war ended.
The said they did not know they would be asked to register as voters. They were to tell the registration brigades that they had changed their addresses and had moved from Cheringoma to Beira. Mazoca said he managed to register, but Virgilio did not, because he was not carrying either his old voter's card or any other form of identification,
Both said they had been deceived and felt guilty about going along with the fraud.
Frelimo claims the whole thing is no more than a Renamo set-up. Juga Zandamela, Frelimo head of mobilization and propaganda in Beira, described it as "political fictions", an elaborate scheme dreamed up by Renamo to convince its supporters that, if it lost in Beira, it would be because of Frelimo fraud.
And it is certainly strange that the Frelimo "infiltrators" should arrive in Beira one night, and be intercepted by Renamo the following morning - as if Renamo knew in advance what was happening.
The fraud alleged by Renamo is theoretically possible, but logistically complex and very expensive. Inhaminga, capital of Cheringoma district, is about 160 kilometres from Beira, and Chemba town is 300 kilometres distant. The fraud would thus entail two lengthy round trips, one to register, and one to vote. The cost in fuel alone would be significant, and hardly recompensed by just a handful of extra votes.
Renamo is suggesting that Frelimo has already smuggled dozens of illegitimate voters into Beira. But to win Beira, which is a Renamo stronghold, Frelimo would need, not dozens of additional votes, but several thousand.
In the 2003 local elections the Renamo candidate for mayor, Daviz Simango, beat his Frelimo opponent by 29,610 votes to 23,405. In the election for the Beira municipal assembly, Renamo did even better. Its list won 31,140 votes to 23,553 for Frelimo. There are not margins that can be overturned by slipping in a few dozen voters from outside the city.
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A more serious threat to Simango's position comes from divisions within Renamo, with disgruntled members of the party suggesting that Simango should not be given a second term of office, and that Renamo parliamentarian Manuel Pereira should be the Renamo candidate.
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| 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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