Maputo — All the polling stations for Mozambique's general and provincial elections will open on time, at 07.00 on Wednesday morning.

The pledge was made at a Tuesday press conference in Maputo by Felisberto Naife, general director of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the Mozambican civil service.

He said that the positioning of voting materials and electoral staff at the polling station sites in rural areas began two days ago, and should be completed on Tuesday. The materials for the urban polling stations will be positioned early on Wednesday morning.

"The conditions have been guaranteed for the polling stations to open at 07.00", he insisted. To reach remote areas, seven helicopters are being used, four hired commercially by STAE, and three lent by the South African government.

Asked if there might be any repetition of the embarrassing situation that occurred in the 2004 elections when many polling stations found that they had the wrong electoral register or no register at all, which disenfranchised citizens who had registered at those stations, Naife was confident that such blunders would be avoided this time.

He said that the production and distribution of the electoral registers had been decentralised to district level, which should avoid registers going astray and ending up in the wrong part of the country.

There are a total of 12,694 polling stations for a registered electorate of over 9.8 million.

Naife added that, to date, 2,073 observers have registered - 1,543 domestic and 530 foreign observers. 952 journalists have been accredited by STAE - 41 of these are foreign journalists and the rest are from the Mozambican media.

AIM asked Naife how much STAE had paid for a disgraceful translation of the electoral legislation into English. This "translation" is in fact a mistranslation - almost every article contains gross errors of English grammar or terminology. Yet it is this shameful document which STAE has been giving to foreign election observers.

Naife, however, said he did not know who had done the translation or how much they had been paid.

There are reputable Mozambican companies that specialize in translation and interpretation, but none of them seem to have been approached. Nor was the translation proof-read by anyone with a decent knowledge of English before it was published.