Good afternoon. With the elections less than a week away, more and more evidence is piling up that the level of fraud and manipulation in favour of ruling party Frelimo will be on a similarly large scale to the local elections last year. The latest example is the intimidation of polling station staff (see below) — those who are not already supportive of Frelimo, since the party has been nominating its chosen people to run polling stations. This on top of biased voter registration favouring Frelimo supporters, the creation of so-called ghost voters to vote for Frelimo, and the announcement that the vote count at district level will, illegally, be in secret.
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The latest from Zitamar News:
Fernando Lima
Although Mozambican election observers continue to point out these abuses, there is silence from the organisations who could exert some influence on the government, namely the Commonwealth and the European Union (EU) — especially the EU, as it is a major donor to Mozambique. Both of them have sent election observer missions, but those missions have chosen not to make any comment until after polling day, on the grounds that they do not want to “interfere” in the elections.
