Maputo — Despite the insistence by Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE) that electoral staff implicated in frauds will not be allowed to work on Sunday's re-run of the municipal elections, in fact exactly the same staff are in place in the municipality of Marromeu, in the central province of Sofala
The level of fraud in Marromeu during the municipal elections held on 11 October was so serious that the Constitutional Council, the country's highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law, annulled the election and ordered a new vote in all 41 polling stations.
In three other municipalities (Nacala-Port, Gurue and Milange), the Council ordered a repeat election in several polling stations, but not the entire municipality.
In clear defiance of orders from the CNE, the Marromeu district director of STAE (Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat), Daniel Vasco, and over 230 members of polling station staff have been kept in their positions, despite the scandal of 11 October.
According to a report on the independent television station STV, the main opposition parties, Renamo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), were outraged to find on Saturday morning that people accused of participating in the October fraud have been re-hired to run the Marromeu polling stations on Sunday.
"We are pleased with the ruling of the Constitutional Council (on re-running the elections) but at the same time we are sad because the ruling itself indicated that all those involved in electoral fraud must not be re-appointed as members of polling station staff', said the MDM Sofala provincial delegate, Marcelino Jose.
"But even so the STAE director here in Marromeu, the leader of this team, has hired all those staff members (MMVs) who committed the electoral crimes. Why?', he asked.
Renamo and the MDM have also accused STAE of accrediting agents of the police (PRM) as polling station monitors for the ruling Frelimo Party. Horacio Calavete, the Renamo Sofala provincial delegate, claimed that 30 PRM agents have been recruited from each of Sofala's 13 districts to work as Frelimo monitors in Marromeu.
"Why doesn't STAE grant accreditation to members of Frelimo?', asked Calavete. "We are not going to allow them to corrupt the will of the municipal citizens of Marromeu'.
Daniel Vasco played down the opposition accusations, telling reporters that the repeat election in Marromeu will be run in accordance with the law and will be fair and transparent. He denied that STAE is granting accreditation to any police agent to operate as a political party monitor.
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"As an electoral body we are preparing so that the vote and the count occur without any upsets', he said. "All the MMVs were retrained some days ago, so that the previous mistakes are not repeated'.
Asked what these "mistakes' were, Vasco said "I don't know. We just received central instructions to repeat the elections, and we will do everything to ensure that they are fair and transparent'.
So two months after the first elections in Marromeu, the STAE district director claims he still does not know what was wrong with them - even though Marromeu is the only municipality in the country where the results were so corrupted that the Constitutional Council felt obliged to annul the election.
There is a similar problem in Gurue municipality, where the New Democracy (ND) party has accused STAE of re-hiring MMVs involved in the 11 October fraud - even though criminal proceedings against them are under way in the Gurue district court.
ND published a list of the MMVs it claimed were being re-hired. It claimed that "all the candidates selected are members of the OJM (the youth wing of the Frelimo Party) and heads of locality', which violates the instructions given by the STAE head office.
According to the preliminary results issued on 27 November by the CNE, Frelimo won in Gurue, and the ND came second. ND claims that, in reality, it won. Gurue is the only place in the country, where the ND made such a strong showing.
