Mozambique: Renamo going through “unprecedented crisis” - Elias Dhlakama
Fila photo / Teodato Hunguana
An urgent general revision of the constitution is needed to consolidate the separation of powers and rethink the system of governance resulting from general elections and the process of administrative decentralisation of the country.
Such were the ideas put forward by jurist Teodato Hunguana last weekend in a lecture entitled “Democracy and the Rule of Law in Mozambique: Analysis and Prospects” delivered at the Higher Institute of International Relations (ISRI), as part of the celebrations of 30 years of its creation as a higher education establishment.
Hunguana, who has served as minister of information, minister of justice and Frelimo Member of Parliament, states that the need to revise the constitution arises from the fact that the country still has not completed the process of transition and building a democratic state,” a process which, moreover, suffers from a certain slowness”, he acknowledges.
Scanning the country’s current stage of democratic development, Hunguana says that, once the problems already approached are recognised, the challenges to be faced are also clear.
“In effect, this is about the need to accept as imperative the need to accelerate and complete the transition [from a one-party state to a multi- party nation], in order to complete the emancipation of the state and institutions. Imperative because it is a necessity dictated by the very state-building process and the logic of the development of our society. Therefore, an imperative of unquestionable national importance,” he says.
According to Hunguana, the credibility of national institutions depends not only on their formal independence, competence and technical attributes, but also, and above all, on their degree of emancipation. Credibility also has consequences for the state’s relationship with other states and with international institutions, “as shown in today’s world”.
In Hunguana’s view, the Mozambican state’s efforts in the short and medium term should focus on three areas. The first is to give substance and effect to the principles established in the constitution regarding the separation of powers.
“But even this already requires a constitutional amendment to remove from the fundamental law certain rules which, in our case, undermine those principles,” Hunguana says.
Rethinking the government system
The second aspect has to do with a general review of the constitution, which should highlight the “rethinking the system of government, in line with what had already been conceived in the Revision of the Constitution Project of the first multiparty legislature (1994-1999).”
According to Hunguana, the current government system, which has adopted the 1990 Constitution, seems dangerously unable to accommodate possible variations in the election results.
“So, rather than provide a framework for the normal development of political stability, on the contrary, it may in certain circumstances be the source of crises that will prove hard to solve. In my opinion, this rethinking of the governance system is extremely urgent, and was already so yesterday. The nonchalance towards this problem is that of sleeping peacefully on top of a powder keg, ignorant of its existence or, knowing about it, thinking that it will never explode,” Hunguana said.
The third and last aspect, according to Hunguana, is the need to develop and complete the logic already embedded in the constitution, particularly with regard to decentralisation.
“In order to start the municipalisation process in our country there was the need for a constitutional revision to introduce the concept of local government, since the constitution did not provide for it. Afterwards, ordinary legislation operationalised the constitutional provisions on local authorities. In another level of decentralisation, the 1990 Constitution provided for democratic representation at provincial level.
“The 2004 Constitution established that such democratic representative bodies would be the provincial assemblies. But unlike what happened with the municipalities, at the provincial level, and due to the introduction of the provincial assemblies, the constitution did not completely configure governance, particularly with regard to the executives of the assemblies. The fact that this was left pending and was left clearly incomplete created a lag in the building the state itself, with political consequences that have been getting worse election after election.”
According to Hunguana, failing to bridge this gap, which is the first item in the Joint Commission agenda and has already given rise to a degree of consensus, would provoke a serious crisis.
The government and Renamo have agreed to create a working group to prepare a revision of the constitution and related laws regarding administrative decentralisation.
“In conclusion, the building of the democratic rule of law in Mozambique can only be consolidated in order to deepen democracy, respecting the constitution on the one hand, and, on the other, developing the same constitution so it can respond appropriately to the increasingly urgent challenges that the future holds,” Hunguana says.
According to Hunguana, abandoning this process again would provoke increasingly severe crises that could lead to the implosion of the state itself.
“Even more serious would be to try to go back on this process by restricting democracy, by restricting citizenship, as we not seldom hear being proposed. So, we must defend the constitution unfailingly, in the face of flagrant violations, without hesitation, without ambiguity, without prevarication. Because a violation of the constitution is a violation of the constitution: there are no ‘justifiable’ or ‘unjustifiable’ violations,” Hunguana says.
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