19 November 2008
Maputo — Fernando Mbararano, the political delegate in the central province of Sofala of Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, has claimed that the ruling Frelimo Party is illicitly transporting people from other parts of the province to vote in the municipal election in Beira.
There is a closely fought, three sided contest in Beira between the current mayor, Daviz Simango (who has been expelled from Renamo and is running as an independent), the candidate imposed by the Renamo leadership, Manuel Pereira, and the Frelimo candidate Lourenco Bulha.
Cited in Wednesday's issue of the independent newsheet "Mediafax", Mbararano claimed that three cars had left Caia district, 300 kilometres north of Beira, packed with people whom Frelimo was taking to vote in the city. He claimed there were other vehicles setting out from Cheringoma, Maringue and Muanza districts for the same purpose.
Mbararano even gave the registration numbers of four of these vehicles, but did not explain how a Renamo official could possibly know the number plates of Frelimo vehicles being used for clandestine purposes.
Mbararano was simply repeating a claim first made by Renamo in July, during the updating of the electoral registers. Renamo claimed then that Frelimo had fraudulently registered 62 people from other parts of the province as Beira voters. These people were supposed to tell voter registration brigades that they had changed their addresses and moved to Beira.
In cases of such transfers, the voters concerned surrender their old voter cards, issued at the places where they previously lived, and receive new ones.
This type of fraud is theoretically possible but difficult to organise and very expensive. The fraud would entail two lengthy round trips, one to register, and one to vote. The costs in fuel alone would be significant, and hardly recompensed by a handful of extra votes.
Furthermore, the operation would show up on the records as an anomalously large number of transferred registrations. In fact, when the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) published the figures for the voter registration update, these showed that 3,464 voters transferred their registration to Beira, which was 1.5 per cent of the Beira registered electorate.
There was the same percentage of transfers in Quelimane, 1.6 per cent in Chimoio and 3.2 per cent in Dondo, which are all municipalities run by Frelimo. So, when compared with other sizeable cities in central Mozambique, there was nothing strange about the number of transferred voters in Beira.
In July, the Frelimo head of mobilization and propaganda in Beira, Juga Zandamela, dismissed the Renamo claims as "political fiction", an elaborate scheme dreamed up by Renamo to convince its supporters that, if it lost in Beira, it would be because of Frelimo fraud.
On Tuesday, the Frelimo Central Committee Secretary for Mobilisation and Propaganda, Edson Macuacua, also rejected the Renamo allegation as entirely false. He told "Mediafax" that Frelimo had no intention of breaking the electoral law, and that the Renamo claims arose out of "a spirit of defeat".
Of course, it is entirely possible that Beira voters may have travelled to Caia, Maringue or other places for business or family reasons, and they have every right to return to the city to cast their ballots.
Some people think the right to vote is worth a long journey. The independent television channel STV on Wednesday morning interviewed a woman in a Maputo polling station queue who had journeyed from South Africa (where she had been under medical treatment) in order to vote.
Mbararano also claimed that Frelimo branches in Beira were organizing "invisible rings" around the polling stations to remind the electorate to vote for Lourenco Bulha. Since he admitted that these rings would be outside the 300 metre radius around the polling stations in which no propaganda is allowed, this activity would not be illegal. The law does not forbid citizens from wearing Frelimo T-shirts outside the 300 metre radius.
Mbararano alleged that members of the National Elections Commission (CNE) have delivered extra ballot papers to Frelimo which will somehow be exchanged for the ballot papers really cast by the voters. No evidence was offered for this, and such a fraud will only work if the opposition polling station monitors fail to do their job properly.
Pf/ (715)
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