64,209 people registered in Gurue municipality which is 149% of the 43,024 voting age adults in the municipality, according to the district STAE in a 10 June report. STAE reports that in the entire district 179,513 people registered, which is 73% of voting age adults. Of those, 64,209 registered in the municipality, which 149% of voting age adults there. This suggests that at least 25,000 people living in the district but outside the municipality illegally registered within the municipality. This is more than enough to determine the election outcome in this contested town.
STAE staff cite three different numbers for voters registered in Guruè
This strange registration is compounded by three different official totals of the 45 days of voter registration. For just the Gurue municipal area , provincial STAE show that 63,700 voters were registered during the 45 days of voter registration, however, the data collected in the warehouse of the district STAE on 8 June, the last day when the registration books containing the voter rolls were publicly displayed, indicated that 65,500 voters had been registered, while final data, provided by the head of the Department of Organisation and Electoral Operations (ROOE) is 64,209 voters were registered.
The difference appears to be that more register books were recorded at the warehouse than were reported in the official STAE report.
A denunciation with detailed tables has been signed by two STAE staff members, both appointed by the MDM. Agostinho Morgado is assistant chief and Manecas Mopuita is a technician for the Department of Organisation and Electoral Operations,
The STAE staff members, representing the MDM, say they asked the director of the ROOE to allow them to go to the warehouse to count the data in the books of each registration post in order to clear up the discrepancies. But the director “just asked us to give him a minute to go outside and seek authorisation. He surprised us by getting into vehicles of the institution that were on their way to the CDE (District Elections Commission) where they went to approve the data without our consent as the makers and implementers of the entire process”.
They also denounced that, in the two days when the registration period was extended into the night (2 and 3 June), many brigades did not comply with the established timetable, and closed the registration posts very early.
On the days when the registration books should have been publicly displayed, many registration posts did not display their books.
The STAE staff members denounced that they were excluded from the monitoring and assessment of the activities undertaken by ROOE as well as of the voter registration brigades. They say that the brigade members only collaborated with staff from the electoral management and administration bodies who came from Frelimo and those chosen by public tender, including the district director.
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These staff members noted that the brigade members and electoral civic education agents undertook partisan activities in favour of the Frelimo Party. By way of example, they cited the fact that brigade member Francisco Muhonhope, in the middle of civic education activity, received from civic education agent Graciano Uatita, a list of members of the OJM registered at various posts. The list was intercepted by a staff member from the MDM, Manecas Mopuita, and is included in the denunciation.
Hence these STAE staff members “distance ourselves from the summary of the data approved and divulged by the Guruè CDE” and ask that a commission of inquiry or multi-sector commission be set up to investigate and assess the denunciations, so that the elections may be free, fair and transparent.
More than 3,700 cards in the district STAE warehouse?
In their denunciation the Guruè STAE staff members question the existence, on 8 and 9 June, of more than 3,700 printed voter cards not yet picked up from the STAE warehouse.
Some brigade members had been instructed to make false statements about voter cards not yet printed. For example a brigade member at the post in the Nipive EPC said that it still had to print 417 voter cards, when in fact it had to print 815 cards
