Maputo — For the second time, members of Mozambique's voter registration brigades have been caught clandestinely printing voter cards in the dead of night, according to the bulletin on the municipal elections published by the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP).

On Tuesday night, monitors from the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) caught red-handed the district director of STAE (Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat) in Chiure, in Cabo Delgado province, and his assistant, in the act of printing voter cards, without any deputy director or opposition monitors being present.

The MDM monitors caught this criminal act at around 18.50 on Tuesday at the head office of the district STAE. There were several brigade members in two rooms printing cards.

The STAE director thus ignored the order given last week by the central STAE directorate that voter registration must take place in the established registration posts within the time envisaged (08.00 to 16.00). The STAE official instructions do not envisage scenarios in which cards are printed without the presence of monitors from the political parties.

This is the second case of this nature, in which managers of the electoral adminstration bodies have ordered the printing of cards in the middle of the night. The first occasion was in Guruè, in Zambézia, last week, when the chairperson of the District Elections Commission was found, at about 20.00, in the local STAE warehouse, with about ten brigade members, printing voter cards.

The excuse for this clandestine behaviour, in both cases, was that the cards were for voters who had registered earlier in the day at posts where the printers had broken down. So the STAE officials used machines elsewhere to print the cards, which they intended to give to the voters the following.

Even if the story is true, the nocturnal printing of cards away from the prying eyes of monitors and observers is still illegal.