We hope the more than 10 million of Mozambican voters to go to vote, as we did on Wednesday (15), despite the lack of transparency with which this whole process is flawed since… ever.
We would like to be wrong but it is very likely that the usual fraud (theft of votes, electoral roll changes, independent observers not accredited, stuffing ballot boxes, falsification of notices), and perhaps some new, happen to the dissemination of the results turned out to be one of the candidates still controls the entire electoral process to his relish and even improvements in electoral law should be sufficient for the transparency that should exist in those that many say is the most important election that Mozambique had!
How to forget the lack of transparency in the election of the President of the National Electoral Commission and his peers to provinces and districts. We cannot ignore the fact that after updating the Census this election Commission discovered more 177 thousand voters, after his own be completed the clearance. We cannot ignore the complicity of the Election Commission before the abusive use of television, radio and newspaper of State for the campaign of the same candidate and party.
Although we are recommended not to stay in the polling stations after we vote, the fact is that many votes have been stolen in the 15 long days that they ask us to wait for the results. In recent elections I saw citizens watching their votes, until the notices of the first count being posted, and the truth is that they felt that their votes counted for the change that they longed for.
We have no doubt that the elections were not fair. After all, one of the candidates, as if that wasn’t enough to have started the campaign long before his opponents, also made use of means which do not belong to his party, but rather to the Mozambican State, to convince us that nearly four decades weren’t enough for everyone to have at least three decent meals and access to clean drinking water every day.
And as if wasn’t enough the advantages which are granted to this candidate, the materials we use to vote, from the ballot box to vote bulletins, were produced by companies whose owners are senior members of the party of the candidate.
Freedom also lacked in these elections. Many of us still were forced to vote to keep the livelihood or even employment, in the State the salary that delays for many people was miraculously prepaid and there are others who voted in Exchange for a t-shirt or a hat.
The war, which they said does not exist, seems to be over but the weapons that are still in possession of the who’s been shooting for almost two years. We don’t know how many guerrillas are in the Woods and what amount of weaponry they possess. However, we know that the Government army, which now also has planes and boats, is still in combative readiness. Will the defeated in the elections have the sportsmanship that is expected?
Despite these elections were not free, fair and neither transparent, we cannot abdicate this civic right to choose the President of Mozambique and the members who will sit in the Parliament.
As citizens we have to actively participate in the democracy of our country, not only every five years, but every day demanding and blaming whoever elected, to improve education, health, sanitation services and all the other promises to have a Mozambique well better than this where every year about 86 thousand newborn children die before completing their first year of life and other 38 thousand die before reaching five years old.
A Mozambique where women are not forced to marry and have children before 18 years old. A Mozambique where to go to work doesn’t mean to face the martyrdom to be transported like an animal. A Mozambique where children learn to read, write and do math so they can eventually become young adults who have healthy families and lead a decent life for themselves and their own children.
