Mozambique: Mondlane meets Portuguese Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs - AIM
No CNE decision yet on: Eligibility of Mondlane and Ronguane; AJUDEM candidates – AIM report
6:31 CAT | 20 Aug 2018
File photo / CNE's Paulo Cuinica told AIM that the CNE has also not yet taken a position on the eligibility of two opposition mayoral candidates – Venancio Mondlane, the head of the Renamo list in Maputo, and Silverio Ronguane, head of the list of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) in the neighbouring city of Matola.
Mozambique’s National Elections Commission (CNE) has postponed a decision on a request by four candidates for the Maputo municipal assembly to withdraw their names from the list presented by AJUDEM (Youth Association for the Development of Mozambique).
CNE spokesperson Paulo Cuinica told AIM on Monday that the CNE discussed the matter on Sunday but took no decision. The CNE meeting was interrupted and will resume on Monday evening.
AJUDEM was set up by several Maputo civil society organisations. The head of its list (and therefore its candidate for Mayor) is Samara Machel Junior (known as “Samito”), the son of the country’s first president.
Machel had hoped to be the mayoral candidate of the ruling Frelimo Party, and his supporters are convinced that he would be the most popular choice among Frelimo members in Maputo. But his name was not on the short list of three drawn up by the Maputo City Committee of the party, and sent to the top Frelimo leadership. Machel last week accepted the offer made by AJUDEM for him to become its mayoral candidate.
By Friday, several of those on the AJUDEM list were complaining that the documents supposedly proving their willingness to stand had been forged. The AJUDEM leadership, however, claims that this is just “manipulation”.
One of the group’s leading figures, Elidio Mavume, cited in Monday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Mediafax”, said “Several members of AJUDEM are being contacted. They are being threatened. In some cases their jobs, even in the state, are at risk. Some of them could lose their positions in the coming days because of this”.
Mavume said he had received a phone call from the Maputo City Frelimo First Secretary, Francisco Mabjaia, asking for “cohesion and removal of the enemy”.
“So for him the enemy is Samora Machel, hence the suggestion that we distance ourselves from Samora Machel Junior”, added Mavume. He said that at least 10 members of AJUDEM have been contacted by Mabjaia or his close collaborators.
He found it strange that some of them were now claiming their documents had been forged, when they had personally delivered those documents to AJUDEM.
Cuinica told AIM that the CNE has also not yet taken a position on the eligibility of two opposition mayoral candidates – Venancio Mondlane, the head of the Renamo list in Maputo, and Silverio Ronguane, head of the list of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) in the neighbouring city of Matola.
Both these candidates fall foul of an article in the law governing municipal elections which states that people who resign from municipal bodies are not eligible to stand in the next round of municipal elections.
Mondlane and Ronguane were elected to the Maputo and Matola municipal assemblies in 2013, but then resigned in order to run for parliament in the 2014 general elections. Both were elected to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic.
There is now a dispute as to whether their resignations in order to run for parliament should disqualify them from this year’s round of municipal elections.
It seems that so far the CNE has been unable to reach consensus on this – which will probably mean that the matter is referred upwards to the Constitutional Council, the highest body on matters of constitutional and electoral law.
A further problem for Mondlane is that he is no facing a libel suit brought by a member of the Maputo Municipal Council, because of remarks he made last year when he was a member of the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, for the MDM, a few months before he defected from the MDM to Renamo.
He had joined local people protesting at the alleged “usurpation” of a football field located between the neighbourhoods of Choupal and Bagamoyo. City Council officials were accused of corruptly selling the field to a Portuguese supermarket chain.
The residents won, and the football field was returned to them – but one councillor is now suing Mondlane for libel.
ALSO READ: Mozambique; Questioned Renamo candidate for Maputo mayor given OK – By Joseph Hanlon
Source: AIM
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