Municipal elections: CNE chairperson in Mozambique’s first elections admits lack of “wisdom” in rejecting candidacies

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Municipal elections: CNE chairperson in Mozambique’s first elections admits lack of “wisdom” in rejecting candidacies

2:20 CAT | 01 Oct 2018

Brazão Mazula seen here in a file photo. gave an interview to Lusa News agency on the 2018 Local Elections process. File photo: O País

The first president of the National Electoral Commission (CNE) of Mozambique, Brazão Mazula, considers that “legalism prevailed and wisdom was lacking” in the rejection of candidacies for the October 10 municipal elections.

“I think they let themselves be carried away by legalism, which is often divorced from wisdom, which is more tempered by the circumstances of time and place,” Mazula told Lusa news agency.

In the Mozambican context, he continued, elections are an essential factor for the maintenance and promotion of peace and the exclusion of candidates has a pernicious effect.

“A country that is in the process of peace building should not assault one of its presuppositions, which is political competition, nor follow schismatic paths,” he says.

Mazula believes that the exclusion of candidates has the potential to challenge the necessary calm of the electoral process and undermine its legitimacy, even if it has legal justification.

The CNE rejected the candidacies for the October 10 municipal elections in Maputo of the heads-of-lists of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), Venâncio Mondlane, and of the Mozambican Youth Development Association (Audem), Samora Machel Junior.

The Constitutional Council (CC) rejected the appeals against the CNE’s deliberations presented by the two parties

Mazula was the president of the CNE when it organised the first general and multi-party elections in Mozambique in 1994, and was later appointed rector of the Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), Mozambique premium higher education institution, where he currently teaches.

Almost seven million voters are registered to vote in Mozambique’s fifth municipal elections on October 10 in the 53 municipalities where election campaigning began on Tuesday.

Source: Lusa