RENAMO DESTROYS BALLOT PAPERS IN TETE

Supporters of the former rebel movement Renamo destroyed ballot papers on Wednesday morning in polling stations located in three schools in Tsangano district in the western Mozambican province of Tete, according to a report in the “Mozambican Political Process Bulletin”, published by AWEPA (European Parliamentarians for Africa), and by the anti-corruption NGO CIP (Centre for Public Integrity).The Bulletin’s correspondent gives a completely different account of this event from that in the anti-government newsheet “CanalMoz”, which claimed that Renamo was preventing electoral fraud, and that it was members of the public who set fire to suspect ballot boxes and the votes they contained.The Bulletin said the excuse for the violence was a claim that ballot boxes had been kept in the homes of community leaders, where they had been stuffed with votes for the ruling Frelimo Party.This ought to be impossible, because, before voting begins, the ballot boxes are opened and shown to monitors of the political parties, and any observers and journalists present, precisely to show that they are empty. They are then resealed and voting commences.
During the clashes between the Renamo supporters and the police two people were injured in one of the schools, and 11 arrests were made. One policeman fled from his post, abandoning his AK-47 rifle, which was then seized by Renamo members. Voting was interrupted, and the three schools were completely abandoned. The Bulletin added that something similar happened at a school in Moatize district, on the boundary with Tsangano, but gave no details.
In the northern coastal town of Angoche, voting was able to begin in 10 polling stations which had the wrong electoral registers. The Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) found that the registers had been sent to the wrong school. STAE was able to recover them and sent them to the correct stations.Little by little, the polling stations in Beira which failed to open on time began opening their doors to voters in the early afternoon. Thus the polling stations located at the Massange Primary School began to operate at about 13.20 – almost six and a half hours after they should have opened. In one polling station, at the 12 October school, voting only began at 14.30.One strange phenomenon reported in a few areas is polling stations without voters. Five polling stations in the northern city of Cuamba, and seven in Manica town, in the centre of the country, opened but nobody was voting. The most likely explanation is that these stations are not in the same places as the voter registration posts, and nobody told the voters of the switch.