The head of Mozambique’s state-run election body has said he and his staff have been receiving death threats ahead of local elections due in November.
”My colleagues and I have been receiving death threats in connection with organisation of the elections,” Antonio Carrasco, director of the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE), told a news conference late on Wednesday.
But the elections director said he would not be intimidated, asserting: ”If I die, democracy in this country will not also die, it will continue.”
Earlier this week an official from the opposition Mozambique National Resistance party (Renamo) accused Carrasco of trying to fraudulently register ruling party supporters by issuing them with provisional voter registration cards.
The month-long registration exercise for the November 19 local elections, which ended last Saturday, was marred by a shortage of registration materials.
The STAE authorised the issuing of provisional registration cards in some constituencies including Maputo, a stronghold of the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo).
The opposition official, Xavier Marcelino, said the STAE issued the provisional cards without consulting the independent National Elections Commission (CNE), of which he is a member.
But Carrasco defended his decision. ”I acted within by competence and there was nothing illegal,” he said.
The November polls will be the second since the end of the country’s civil war more than 10 years ago, and the first to be contested by the opposition.
Renamo, which boycotted similar elections in 1998, has warned that it will not tolerate electoral fraud. – Sapa-AFP