27 October 2009
Maputo — The head of the European Union's Election Observer Mission to Mozambique, Fiona Hall, has denied that the mission is involved with or sympathetic towards any particular candidate or party standing in Wednesday's general and provincial elections.
Interviewed by the Beira daily "Diario de Mocambique", Hall, who is a British member of the European parliament, said that such allegations, made by the Sunday paper "Domingo", were untrue.
It was part of standard observation methodology, she explained, for such missions to make contact with all the bodies involved in an election. In the central provinces of Manica and Sofala, the EU observers had met with the local branches of the National Elections Commission (CNE), and of its executive body, the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), with district administrators, and representatives of political parties and civil society organisations.
"We have been well received", said Hall. "All the people with whom we have spoken have been very cooperative in the information they have transmitted".
Hall did not think there was anything excessive in the number of observers sent to Mozambique. The EU mission has 131 observers - but in the elections in Togo, a much smaller country than Mozambique, the EU had placed 100 observers. It was thus not true that "special attention" was being paid to the Mozambican elections.
"The main concern of the European Union is to support democratic processes and we are always grateful when governments, as in the case of Mozambique, invite us to observe elections", she said. "We have never come with pre-conceived ideas. When we go into this kind of work, our desire is that everything should take place in an atmosphere of calm, tranquility and peace".
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