Mozambican electoral bodies have received 72% of the €284 million budgeted for Wednesday’s general elections and all the material needed for the vote is in the final stages of distribution, an official source told Lusa on Monday.
“So far the information I can give is that [conditions have been created for the vote]. All the provinces have received the material and they have also placed it in the districts,” Regina Matsinhe, spokeswoman for the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE), told Lusa today.
According to each province’s plans for distributing material, she added, “priority” will be given, in this final phase, to the districts “that are furthest away and so on”, in the process of distributing the last electoral material.
“The conditions have been met. The material is already there, the pens and papers etc. were being distributed, we’re talking about the ballot boxes, we’re talking about the booths and we’re talking about the metal suitcases, which are for storing the material, it’s been distributed for some time,” he said.
The rest of the material, produced in South Africa, is also already in the country, and on Saturday it was delivered to the last provinces in southern Mozambique.
“Everything has been taken care of to say that on the 9th [Wednesday], at 07:00, the polling stations can open smoothly,” said the STAE spokeswoman.
The electoral bodies have budgeted these elections at 19,933 million meticais (€284 million), delivered in phases by the government.
“It’s common knowledge that we received the amounts as they became available. By Friday, our information was that 72% of these funds had been made available. There is a budget to pay the polling station staff, the provinces have already received it,” said Regina Matsinhe.
Mozambique is holding its seventh presidential elections this Wednesday, in which the current head of state, Filipe Nyusi, who has reached the constitutional limit of two terms, is no longer running, at the same time as the seventh legislative elections and the fourth for provincial assemblies and governors.
More than 17 million voters are registered to vote, including 333,839 registered abroad, according to data from the National Electoral Commission.
The elections will involve more than 184,500 polling station staff spread across the country’s 154 districts (180,075) and outside the country (4,436).
On polling day, there will be 8,737 polling stations in Mozambique and 334 abroad, corresponding to 25,725 polling stations in the country and 602 abroad, each with seven members.
In Cabo Delgado, which has been experiencing a climate of insecurity for seven years due to attacks by terrorist groups, Regina Matsinhe says that the conditions are in place for Wednesday’s vote in terms of material and security.
“So far I have no information to show otherwise. The information I have is that the conditions are in place for the election to take place under equal circumstances throughout the country,” she emphasised.
