Voter registration problems in Mozambique stem from intense oversight

Electoral law expert Guilherme Mbilana believes that the challenge of wrongdoing in the census of municipal elections in Mozambique is due to increased oversight by political parties and civil society, as the anomalies are “not new”.

“I think they [os partidos políticos da oposição e a sociedade civil] aroused interest in monitoring voter registration,” “putting their own inspectors in registration posts,” Mbilana said, speaking to the Lusa news agency.

This time, voter registration was “fully controlled,” while in the past, the concern was with voting, counting, and tabulation of votes.

The political parties “only put candidate delegates to observe and observe the vote, to observe the counting of votes, they had little interest in the voter registration stage, this is new,” he added.

This professor and electoral lawyer also pointed to the role of social media in presenting evidence of crimes on voter lists as another element that contributed to the “outrage” caused by some of the incidents.

Guilherme Mbilana noted that there is evidence that voter registration has been marked by voter registration after business hours, at unspecified locations, disappearances and constant breakdowns of voter registration equipment, the discovery of voter cards in the hands of registrars, and deliberate acts to harm certain groups of voters and give preference to others.

On the other hand, many voters remained to register due to flooding of posts and malfunctioning equipment, he noted.

“There are elements of evidence, there are elements that are images that have been circulating on social media” and that “no one has ever come to say that all this is not true,” he stressed.

Guilherme Mbilana stressed that the opposition has a “perception of surgical selection” of seats where it believes there is a larger constituency to deliberately create difficulties for voter registration.

Complaints by opposition parties, he continued, stemmed from the fact that anomalies in the voter registration process were mostly recorded in areas with municipalities not governed by the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), the party that has been in power in the country since independence. . . .

Guilherme Mbilana questioned the veracity of the number of registered voters, estimated at more than eight million, as many of them were prevented.

Mbilana noted that while opposition political parties have improved their ability to observe the electoral process, they continue to show gaps in law enforcement in order for their grievances to be addressed by the competent authorities.

“What is happening in this country is that people do not know how to determine the type of procedure and the person in which it should be carried out in terms of measures to annul” electoral acts, he stressed.

Opposition political parties are expressing their “outrage publicly and in conversation” while ignoring the administrative and legal roadmap they must follow to challenge what they see as violations.

Guilherme Mbilana pointed to the mandatory written complaint at voter registration offices, appeals to the electoral administration and local courts, to the central authorities and finally to the Constitutional Council as mandatory scenarios for “electoral litigation”.

“The Constitutional Council remains silent until it receives appeals” to rule on crimes during the census, including the abolition of the voter registration process, because the “pre-challenging principle” is at work, he noted – the second principle, which should be the initial a complaint that can be subsequently appealed.

On Tuesday, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the main opposition party, demanded the annulment of the voter registration held between April 20 and June 3, accusing Frelimo of manipulating the operation.

In the face of these serious violations, Renamo demands that voter registration be reviewed and a new, impartial and free from manipulation and vices be held in order to guarantee free, fair and transparent elections,” spokesman José said. Manteigas at a press conference in Maputo.