Electoral law specialist Guilherme Mbilana believes that the challenge to the illegalities that occurred in the registration for the Mozambican local elections is due to greater monitoring by political parties and civil society, because the anomalies "are nothing new".

"I think that they [the opposition political parties and civil society] have woken up to the interest of monitoring the electoral register," by "placing their inspectors at the registration offices," said Mbilana, speaking to the Lusa news agency.

This time, voter registration was "monitored to the full", whereas in the past the concern was with voting, counting and tabulation.

The political parties "only placed candidate delegates to monitor and follow the vote, to follow the vote count, they didn't bother with the voter registration phase, this is the new thing," he added.

The lecturer and specialist in electoral law also pointed to the role of social networks in providing evidence of crimes in the electoral register as another element that contributed to the "indignation" created around some incidents.

Guilherme Mbilana noted that there is evidence that voter registration was marked by the registration of voters after hours, in unauthorized places, the disappearance and constant breakdown of voter registration equipment, the discovery of voter cards in the hands of registration agents and deliberate actions to harm certain groups of voters and favour others.

On the other hand, many voters remained unregistered due to flooding at the polling stations and equipment breakdowns, he noted.

"There is evidence, there is evidence, which is the images that have been circulating on social media," and that "no one has ever come out and said that any of it was true," he emphasized.

Guilherme Mbilana stressed that the opposition has the "perception that there has been a surgical selection" of the places where it believes there is the largest electorate in order to deliberately create difficulties in voter registration.

The opposition parties' complaints, he continued, stem from the fact that the anomalies in the electoral registration process were mostly reported in districts with municipalities that are not governed by the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), the party in power in the country since independence.

Guilherme Mbilana questioned the reliability of the number of voters that the electoral bodies claim to have registered - which, according to preliminary data, points to more than eight million - since many were prevented from voting.

Mbilana noted that although opposition political parties have improved their capacity to monitor the electoral process, they continue to show shortcomings in complying with the law in order to have their complaints addressed by the competent bodies.

"What is happening in this country is that people don't know how to identify the type of procedure and the entity in which to proceed, in terms of measures to annul" electoral acts, he said.

The opposition political parties are expressing their "indignation in public and in conversations", ignoring the administrative and legal roadmap they must follow in order to challenge what they see as violations.

Guilherme Mbilana pointed to the obligation to make a written complaint at the voter registration offices, to appeal to the electoral administration bodies and local courts, to the central entities and, finally, to the Constitutional Council as obligatory "electoral litigation" routes.

"The Constitutional Council is silent, as long as no appeal comes before it," to rule on crimes during the census, including the annulment of the voter registration process, because "the principle of prior impugnation" works, he noted - a principle according to which there must be an initial complaint before the matter can then be appealed. (Lusa)