Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
28 October 2009
Maputo — The electoral authorities in the northern Mozambican province of Nampula, the largest of the 11 provincial constituencies, have guaranteed that everything is in place for the 2,146 Nampula polling stations to open on time, at 07.00 on Wednesday.
By Tuesday afternoon there were no signs of any snags, according to Jacinto Antonio, the head of operations of the Nampula branch of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the Mozambican civil service.
"When the logistics, and particularly transport, are well prepared, then everything functions as planned", Antonio told AIM.
Two helicopters were available in Nampula to take the voting materials to remote areas, notably islands off the coast of Moma and Angoche districts, and some parts of Lalaua district that are not accessible overland. Antonio said that by Tuesday the materials had already been taken to all these areas.
The chairperson of the Nampula Provincial Elections Commission (CPE), Benjamin Rodolfo, told AIM that 1,282 domestic observers had been accredited in the province from four organisations.
Some of these "observers", however, could not even tell journalists the name of the organisation for which they will observe the polls, nor explain clearly what their tasks as observers are. They said they had been invited by "acquaintances" in the observation organisation
The group which has such strange ways of recruiting observers is the obscure "Mozambican Electoral Observation Forum" (FOMOE), which should not be confused with the respected and credible Electoral Observatory, by far the largest domestic observation group.
FOMOE had put its names in late, and so its observers were still receiving credentials on Tuesday.
Most of these "observers" went to pick up their credentials in state vehicles including a minibus belonging to the Nampula Provincial Education Directorate.
Rodolfo said he did not know anything about this.
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