Maputo — The electoral civic education campaign, ahead of the Mozambican municipal elections scheduled for 11 October, begins on Monday in all the districts that contain municipalities.
The purpose of the campaign is to mobilise potential voters to go to the voter registration posts and acquire the voter card, without which they will not be able to cast their votes in October. The voter registration period runs from 20 April to 3 June.
The campaign will involve 4,440 civic education agents, who have already been hired and trained. They will work out of 3,192 registration posts.
The campaign will be launched in Marracuene district, about 30 kilometres north of Maputo. Marracuene is one of 12 new municipalities established in a law passed by the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, last year.
But attentions are likely to be drawn, not to Marracuene, but to the municipality of Mocimboa da Praia, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado. Although any one of half a dozen other municipalities in the province could have been chosen, the electoral bodies opted to start the civic education campaign in Mocimboa, despite its serious security problems.
Islamist terrorists occupied Mocimboa da Praia town for about a year before Mozambican and Rwandan forces expelled them in 2021. Since then, many of those displaced by the jihadists have returned, but many others are still living in the provincial capital, Pemba, or other parts of the province. Many of the public buildings in Mocimboa da Praia were wrecked during the terrorist occupation, and have yet to be rebuilt.
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This raises the question - is it feasible to hold elections in Mocimboa da Praia in October?
According to the latest issue of the municipal elections bulletin published by the NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), the two main political parties give radically different answers. The main opposition party, Renamo, suggests not holding elections at all this year in Mocimboa da Praia.
The ruling Frelimo Party, on the other hand, thinks voter registration should go ahead where security conditions allow - this would be only in the municipal area, and not in the entire district.
The agreement reached in 2018 was that all voters living in districts containing municipalities should be registered - even though people living outside the municipal areas could not vote.
According to CIP, Renamo believes that this agreement is still in force, and that all districts should be treated equally. So if the elections do go ahead in Mocimboa da Praia, the registration should take place in the entire district, regardless of the security conditions.
The CNE was expected to rule on this issue last week, but failed to do so.
