Fernando Mazanga, deputy chair of the National Elections Commission (CNE), has responded to our report last week (Bulletin 248, 16 Apr) by admitting that the CNE approved too few registration brigades in rural Nampula. He says the projections of required brigades were too low, and this was intentional, so many voters cannot register.

We reported that the five districts in Nmapula with the lowest level registration so far have brigades expected to register the most people, more than 3000 voters each (Moma, Larde, Nacala-Velha, Erati and Memba). But in six of the eight municipal districts, more people already have registered than the number of adults in the district. They are Malema (112%), Mossuril (108%), Monapo (106%), Ilha de Moçambique (102%), Ribaue (101%) and Angoche (100%). These brigades have been assigned to register ghost voters to vote for Frelimo, and not real citizens in rural zones to vote for Renamo.

Five years ago, this sort of fraud mean Nampula lost parliamentary seats in favour of Gaza province, where voters who do not exist are being registered.

This does raise a question: Renamo has a deputy director and other officials in STAE. How did they not notice this distortion?