Mozambique: 7.6 million registerd for elections!

7.6 million people have registered to vote, a quite respectable 75% of the 10.1 million voting age adults (over 18 years old). Registration was to have been only from 24 September to 22 November, but it stated slowly due to problems with training staff to use the new briefcase registration computers, and was extended to 15 December. Finally, an entire new registration period was announced, from 15 January to 15 March.

The Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) insists that the computer problems that plagued the first phase of voter registration last year will not recur when registration resumes tomorrow. “We are much better prepared”, STAE’s new general director Felisberto Naife told a Maputo press conference on Saturday.
The entire electorate is being re-registered from scratch since it is generally accepted that the existing registers are unreliable. The new phase will have 3242 registration brigades through country.

In nine of 11 provinces, brigades have already registered more people than were registered in 1999. However, in Nampula and Zambezia, which have 40% of Mozambique’s total population, fewer people have registered than in 1999; they are also the only provinces where below 70% of potential voters have registered. This is politically sensitive since Renamo gains most of its votes from those two provinces, and in the 2004 election there were apparently justified complaints that some voters in Renamo areas of Zambezia had not been registered. The problem will be made worse because both provinces are affected by the heavy rain and flooding. (In Sofala, the other Renamo stronghold and the province currently worst hit by floods, registration in the first phase was just at the national average of 75%.)

Naife admitted that last year some parts of Nampula, Niassa, Cabo Delgado and Tete provinces were not reached at all during the first registration campaign. They were to have been covered by mobile brigades, but because of the long delays in receiving the computer equipment, they were left out. Naife said these areas would be the top priority for the second phase of registration.

An informal target for registration appears to be 85% of eligible voters, which has been typical of past registrations. This will require registering 1 million people in the coming two months.