Maputo — The largest group of Mozambican election observers, the Electoral Observatory, plans to place about 1,800 observers at the polling stations for Wednesday's general and provincial elections.

The Observatory's spokesperson, Sheik Abdul Carimo, told reporters on Tuesday that 998 observers will be fixed. They will each observe in detail the activities of one polling station, and the results from these polling stations, selected at random, will be the Observatory's parallel count.

In the last elections, in 2004, the observatory's count came very close to the official results, and was thus a valuable check that the official results were mostly reliable.

Carimo said that a further 800 observers will be mobile, and will each cover at least three polling stations. He estimated that the Observatory will thus be able to cover around 4,000 of the 12,694 polling stations.

"So we should get a good idea about what is happening in the country as a whole", he said.

Carimo added that the Observatory has been in contact with all the foreign observer missions, and is working with them. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is acting as coordinator between the various observer missions.

Rev Dinis Matsolo, the deputy chairperson of the Observatory, appealed to Mozambican voters to go en masse to the polls on Wednesday. He suggested they should make their way to the polling stations as soon as they open, at 07.00, rather than waiting until the afternoon.

He called on the political parties to obey the laws and the regulations in force, and to ensure a peaceful climate.

The Electoral Observatory is far and away the largest and most credible of the domestic observer groups. It is a coalition between the three mainstream religious bodies in the country - the Catholic Church, the Christian Council (which represents the main protestant churches) and the Islamic Council - and several prominent NGOs, including the Mozambican Human Rights League (LDH).