From 1994, the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin has reported all of Mozambique’s multiparty elections, and for the 2019 general elections we published daily in key periods. The Bulletin has developed a system of local correspondents across the country. For the 2019 general elections we had 463 correspondents, of whom 235 worked for community radios, 76 were from civil society, and 56 were teachers. All districts in Mozambique were covered by at least two correspondents, many of whom had worked for us in previous elections, including the 2018 municipal elections.
All correspondents received special training, which stressed verification and neutrality.
Verification means that any report must be confirmed – by checking with police, witnesses or other sources. We assume (and hope) that all of our correspondents vote, but stress that correspondents cannot take a campaign role for any candidate.
Impartiality and neutrality are key. Our editorial team in Maputo was in regular contact with correspondents to ensure accuracy. We were also able to use our correspondents to conduct rapid surveys, for example during registration our check on reported problems with solar panels used for registration computers led to the discovery that some had incompatible transformers and some did not.
Our team are both observers and journalists and our publisher, CIP, is a registered observer group. International rules for domestic observers do not exclude journalists, but require that any publication must be central and published by the registered observer group, which is precisely what we do, publishing the Bulletin.
For the first time the Bulletin also did a twice weekly broadcast on 50 community radio stations in 7 languages: Portuguese, Changana, Chisena, Lomwe, Nyungue, Emakhua and Kimuane. Most stations used the broadcasts in Portuguese and at least one local language.
Half of community radios are run by the government under ICS (Instituto de Comunicação Social, Institute of Social Communication) and many of our correspondents work or volunteer for ICS. For the first time, at national level, on 11 September 2019 ICS Director-General, Farida Abdula, issued a circular stating that ICS staff are barred from engaging in outside journalism and observation activities. She made clear that community radio staff are civil servants or agents of the state. In some provinces it was just an informal threat to push correspondents to stop working of the bulletin. Only Niassa ICS actually attempted to dismiss people – largely volunteers because government-employed journalists are covered by a special clause in the constitution which says “the State guarantees the exemption of the public sector media as well as the independence of journalists from the Government, the administration and other political powers.” (art 48) ICS also refused to accept the Bulletin broadcasts without censuring them first, which we could not accept.
Credentials were a serious problem. Zambézia Provincial Election Commission (CPE) refused to issue credentials to Bulletin correspondents, but CIP was able to obtain them from CNE in Maputo. Another problem in some places was that CPEs made “mistakes” with the credentials, assigning the journalists to other districts than the one they requested, and some were unable to report. However, compared to the widespread obstruction of observation, MPPB correspondents had relatively few problems.
