Quelimane — About 400 voters in Navara, a remote area of Pebane district, in the central Mozambican province of Zambezia, found themselves deprived of the right to vote on Wednesday morning because of a helicopter breakdown.

The helicopter should have transported the polling station staff and the voting materials to Navara (which is located inside the Gile National Park) at 05.00. However, the aircraft suffered a breakdown in Maganja da Costa district the previous day, as it was preparing to fly to the provincial capital, Quelimane, to refuel.

The polling station staff were thus stranded in Pebane town, as they waited for possible alternative transport to take them to Navara.

"We've asked for a helicopter from Nampula (the neighbouring province)", Meque Braz, a member of the Zambezia Provincial Elections Commission told AIM. "I've just heard that the helicopter has indeed arrived, and flown with the staff from Pebane to Navara".

He was speaking at 16.15, just one hour and 45 minutes before polls were due to close.

Asking if the timetable could be extended for Navara, Braz said "there will be no alterations to the timetable. We have to comply with the timetable. But we think they can still vote, since there are only 400 voters".

He thought they could all vote, if they went to the polling station immediately after the helicopter arrived. If the voters of Navara are in a queue outside the polling station at 18.00, then, under the Mozambican electoral legislation, they must be allowed to vote.

The chairperson of the Zambezia CPE, Egidio Morais, claimed that the great majority of Zambezia's 2,064 polling stations opened on time, at 07.00 on Wednesday morning.

Some of the voters with whom AIM spoke at Quelimane polling stations said they had started queuing at 04.00 Some of them were furious at what they regarded as the extremely slow processing of voters by the polling station staff. They accused the staff of giving priority to queue jumpers, ignoring those who had been waiting for hours.