The President of the Provincial Electoral Commission (CPE) in Zambézia province tried unsuccessfully to thwart the accreditation of 60 electoral observers from the Center for Public Integrity (CIP).

The civil society organization says in its election bulletin that it "had to wait six months to obtain around 60 credentials".

The documents were submitted in March of this year, but were only granted in September.

"Deliberately, the process, submitted in March of this year, was delayed and returned several times, on the grounds that there were irregularities. In some cases, some of our observers' documents were lost and the file returned for alleged lack of documents," it reads.

To circumvent the maneuvers, the CIP submitted the process through the central STAE. It was only through an order from Dom Carlos Matsinhe that the President of the Zambezia CPE gave in and issued the credentials to the CIP observers.

"According to the members of the CNE, the president of the CPE in Zambézia is a repeat offender, but no one touches him because he is supposedly carrying out party missions," writes CIP.

The bulletin recalls that Zambézia is one of the provinces that has seen several electoral offenses in the past local elections, from electoral fraud to the discovery of clandestine registrations in the dead of night, registration of voters on priority lists, among others. Two of Zambézia's municipalities were returned to the opposition by the Constitutional Council (Quelimane and Alto Molócuè). The electoral bodies had given victory to Frelimo. Zambézia is also the province where more than 30 MMVs are on trial for electoral fraud.