Maputo — The vast majority of the 12,694 polling stations in Mozambique's general and provincial elections held on Wednesday did indeed open on time, at 07.00, declared the general director of the electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the civil service, Felisberto Naife, at a Maputo press conference on Thursday.

Naife admitted there were exceptions. In three polling stations, in remote parts of the districts of Macomia and Nangade (Cabo Delgado province), and Pebane (Zambezia), it proved impossible to set up the polling stations the previous night. Helicopters were used to fly the polling station staff and the voting materials in on Wednesday afternoon, and voting took place in the evening.

Most of the polling stations closed at 18.00, and Naife said the voting materials are now on their way to the district capitals. In remote areas, the seven helicopters acquired by STAE (four hired, and three on loan from the South African government) are in the air again to evacuate the polling station staff, and ensure that the results sheets and other materials reach the district capitals safely.

The district elections commissions now have three days to collate all the results sheets from the polling stations and produce a district result.

Naife said the turnout was "substantially higher" than in the last general elections (when only 36 per cent of the registered electorate voted), but he was careful not to put any figure on it. Initially it was believed that there was a high turnout because long queues were reported across the country on Wednesday morning.

But by early afternoon, the queues had mostly disappeared. AIM's estimate, on the basis of information currently available, is that turnout is less than 50 per cent of the 9.8 million registered voters.

Naife could not give any response to the various irregularities reported by journalists, but promised that all the cases mentioned would be looked into. The most serious concerns the illegal expulsion of two election observers, one from polling stations in Changara district, Tete province, and the other from Dombe, a small town in Sussundenga district, Manica province.

There are also a few anomalous results. Thus Radio Mozambique reported that in Chicualacuala district, the results sheets posted at polling stations gave incumbent president Armando Guebuza 3,218 votes, and that both his opponents, Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the former rebel movement Renamo, and Daviz Simango, of the Mozambique Democratic Movement, received no votes at all.

Whenever one candidate scores 100 per cent of the votes, fraud must be suspected, but so far no further details are available, and the radio did not say how many Chicualacuala polling stations the results come from.

Naife declined to comment on the Chicualacuala result.