Maputo — Felisberto Naife, the general director of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the Mozambican civil service, on Monday denied claims that polling station staff in the central city of Chimoio have been recruited from members and supporters of the ruling Frelimo Party.

On Sunday, a spokesperson in Chimoio for the former rebel movement Renamo alleged that fraud was being prepared in the forthcoming municipal elections, and brandished sheets of paper contained over 180 names who, he claimed, were Frelimo veterans from the war of independence, former district administrators, and other well known Frelimo figures, who would staff the polling stations.

At a Maputo press conference, Naife said that whatever the paper waved by the Renamo spokesperson was, it had certainly not been produced by STAE. The recruitment of polling station staff had taken place in exactly the same way in Chimoio as in the other 42 municipalities.

The staff had been recruited publicly, said Naife. The public tender was held a month and a half ago, and all the successful candidates were given 16 days training. STAE had recruited rather more people than needed, so that at the end of the training it could select the best. On Monday the staff are signing their contracts, he said, and receiving their final instructions prior to the polls opening on Wednesday.

Renamo also claimed that Frelimo .has been purchasing voter cards from Chimoio voters, and intended to give them to Frelimo members in the districts who have no right to vote in Chimoio. Naife pointed out that each voter card bears a photograph, and polling station staff must check to see whether the person shown on the card is the same as the person holding the card.

In the event that the photo on the voter card has been damaged, staff have been instructed to demand that the voter produce another document, such as a passport, or identity card, which contains a photograph.

A further scenario raised by some opposition politicians is that Frelimo will engineer power cuts, and under cover of darkness switch the ballot boxes. Naife said that in reality STAE makes its preparations for voting on the assumption that there is no electricity available from the public grid.

Most polling stations are in schools, and many schools, even in large cities such as Maputo and Beira, do not have electricity. The issue of power cuts is thus irrelevant. The voting itself takes place in daylight hours (from 07.00 to 18.00) when artificial light is not required.

But the count at the polling stations will require light, and each station will be equipped with a battery powered lamp. The batteries last for up to 12 hours. Even so, spare batteries are included in the polling station kits.

Unlike previous elections, this time the ballot boxes are transparent, said Naife, in line with the election procedures recommended by SADC (Southern African Development Community).

In the 2004 general elections, one serious problem was that some polling stations either had no electoral register, or the wrong register, which meant that people registered at that station were unable to vote. Naife was optimistic that such blunders would not occur this time.

"We have learnt from the past", he said. The kits for each of the polling stations were being assembled at provincial level, well in advance of election day. Each kit should include not only the electronically generated electoral register for that station, but also, as a back-up, the hand-written register on which it was based. Naife was confident that this was sufficient to ensure "that there will be no failings on the day".

STAE also demonstrated to representatives of political parties, observers and the press the computer system that will be used to generate the final results. The system was put out to public tender, won by the Maputo company Soft Ltd.

The primary count takes place at the polling stations immediately after the polls have closed on Wednesday evening. The results sheet ("edital", plural "editais") is made public by fixing it on the polling station wall, and copies are given to the polling station monitors from the political parties.

A further copy is sent to the District Elections Commission which adds up the totals manually to produce the intermediate count. These results are then sent to the Provincial Elections Commissions to be typed into the Soft system. A CD-ROM of the results is produced in each province which is sent to STAE in Maputo where the final results are checked.

A Soft technician explained that there are security features which make it virtually impossible to falsify results. Each edital must be typed twice into the system, by two different operators. The operator typing an edital does not know which other operator will type it, or indeed whether it has already been typed into the system or not.

Furthermore, an operator cannot communicate with the outside world, since he is not allowed to take a mobile phone, or even a pen or pencil, into the inputting room.

The computer system will reject any edital where the two versions are not the same, and any edital where the numbers do not add up (that is, the number of votes cast cannot be larger than the number of people registered at that polling station, and the number of valid votes, blank ballots and invalid ballots should equal to the number of ballot papers found when the ballot box was opened)..

Political party representatives, observers and journalists will be able to see the editais on screens (but will have no other access to the system). They will thus be able to check whether the results put into the system are the same as the results posted at the polling stations.

The system seems to be considerably better, and more secure, than the one used in the 2004 general elections, which was not given such a public display. At the end of the demonstration, the chairperson of the National Elections Commission (CNE), Joao Leopoldo da Costa, declared "We are creating a system that leaves no room for doubt, no room for fraud, no room for any distortions of the results".