“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck,” so says the Duck test.
Staring on 20 April, Mozambicans in 65 municipalities have been registering to vote for the October municipal elections. However, reports of incidents, particularly in the provinces of Nampula, Sofala and Zambézia, have become routine and with a touch of criminal intent.
Videos are making the rounds on social media of illegal night registration and outside the premises of the voter registration brigades. This has happened in Gurue and Chiúre, in Zambézia, and Ribaue, in Nampula, and it has involved district Technical Secretariat Electoral Administration (STAE) director and technicians.
Specifically, two mobile computers used to register voters were found at the residence of the ruling Frelimo party’s first secretary in Iapala, in Ribaue, where a STAE brigade was registering about 20 voters. The brigade staff and the voters escaped into the night.
Elsewhere in Angoche, off the cost of Nampula, the local mayor, Ossufo Raja, told Mozambique Insights that, using threats, the police district commander has been discouraging voters from registering – Angoche is a district where the opposition Renamo party has historically enjoyed popular support.
Apparently, the mobile computers had been allocated to two registration posts, which had not been registering voters for a week with the excuse they computers had broken down.
Media report that Luís Cavalo, STAE provincial director has confirmed the fact, adding that criminal complaint has been made against three suspects, whose whereabouts are currently unknown.
Comment
This looks like a fraud in the making. STAE has made it clear that the suspects had acted on their own responsibility, meaning that the electoral bodies were not part of the illegal registration process.
That the mobile computers were at the residence of Frelimo’s provincial first secretary would suggest that the suspects were acting hand in hand with the party to commit electoral fraud in the forthcoming municipal elections.
It is Mozambique Insights’ understanding that Frelimo would love to wrest control of those municipalities won by the opposition in the 2018 municipal elections and inflate the number of voters in those where the elections were very tight and there was evidence of rigging in order to prevent a likely opposition victory.
Furthermore, President Filipe Nyusi would use a clean sweep of the board as an argument to convince Frelimo to give him a third term.
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