Maputo — Polling station staff will be held responsible for any irregularity that takes place in the polling stations during the general and provincial elections scheduled for 28 October.

At a Maputo press conference on Thursday, Felisberto Naife, director of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the Mozambican civil service, stressed that one of the innovations in this year's elections is a Code of Conduct for polling station staff, which they are expected to follow to the letter.

Under this code, the staff are expected to show impartiality, transparency, professionalism and responsibility. The code instructs them "not to use fraudulent means to benefit any candidate, party or coalition".

The code also warns them "not to distort, suppress, steal, destroy, invalidate or alter the electoral registers, the ballot papers, the results sheets, the polling station minutes or any other electoral documentation".

The importance of such a provision was shown in the 2004 general elections when dozens of polling stations (particularly, but not exclusively in Changara district, Tete province) reported impossibly high turnouts of 100 per cent or more (in an election where average turnout was under 40 per cent).

These corrupted polling stations gave perhaps 100,000 or more extra votes to Frelimo and its presidential candidate, Armando Guebuza (fortunately, the margin of victory for Frelimo and Guebuza was so huge, that this fraud did not materially affect the result). The Changara fraud was only possible with the connivance of the polling station staff who submitted fictitious results sheets ("editais"). Nobody was prosecuted for this offence.

There have also been repeated incidents of dishonest polling station staff adding marks to ballot papers during the count, to make it look as if voters have tried to vote for more than one candidate. These votes are then declared invalid. This happened in at least three polling stations during the second round of the mayoral election in the northern port of Nacala on 11 February this year.

The Code of Conduct warns that polling station staff "are individually responsible for criminal acts they may commit during the vote and count".

Such criminal acts include any attempt to falsify the results, any alteration or destruction of electoral documents, any theft of ballot papers, and any ballot box stuffing.

It is also a crime to hinder the work of the polling station monitors appointed by the political parties. In particular, the polling station staff must take note of any complaint or protest from the monitors, so that it can be forwarded eventually to the National Elections Commission (CNE).

In the past, opposition parties have found complaints rejected by the CNE, because they were not made promptly when the alleged offence happened. The usual opposition retort is that they tried to lodge a complaint at the polling station, but the staff refused to accept it. The Code makes it very clear that the staff must take note of all complaints, even if they regard them as frivolous.

Also criminal is any refusal to distribute copies of the results sheets to the party monitors, or any attempt to prevent accredited monitors from entering or leaving the polling station.

The staff are expected to maintain strict neutrality, and it is a crime for them to undertake any form of campaigning.

"This code is obligatory", stressed Naife, "and it will be included in the contracts that the polling station staff sign".

The Code alone is not sufficient. Naife stressed that "monitoring by the political parties remains indispensable".