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Corrected: The article that banned Samora Machel Junior from Mozambique October elections has just been considered unconstitutional
7:46 CAT | 14 Nov 2018
In file CoM
(Corrects ‘declared unconstitutional’ to ‘considered unconstitutional’; adds the full text of the Constitutional Council decision, in Portuguese, HERE ; adds the number of the article that the CC considers unconstitutional: article 23 )
The Mozambican Constitutional Council has today considered unconstitutional an article of the Electoral Law that invalidates lists of candidates with insufficient supplementary candidates, a situation that prevented Samora Machel Júnior from running for the local elections of October 10.
The ruling of the Constitutional Council that validated and proclaimed the October 10 election results states that competitors should be given the opportunity to fill in irregularities in the application lists, with the exception of non-compliance with deadlines or candidates not registered to vote.
Constitutional Council validates elections except in Marromeu – #Mozambique https://t.co/2ToR7fwURx pic.twitter.com/Q8RLAI2WBf
— Club of Mozambique (@clubOmozambique) November 14, 2018
“In a State of Democratic Law, where universal suffrage is a fundamental right, in the electoral process, all irregularities must be susceptible of remediation, except for those which, by the very nature of things, can not be corrected, the non-fulfilment of deadlines, candidate not registered, etc. ,” reads the decision of the Constitutional Council, the equivalent to a Constitutional Court.
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“The risk of final rejection of a list due to lack of substitutes, without being given an opportunity to fill the gap, creates situations of extreme insecurity for the candidates,” it adds.
“The legislator can not unjustifiably appear as an obstacle to the exercise of the fundamental right to elect and be elected,” said the same body.
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Samora Machel Junior, the son of the first Mozambican President, Samora Machel, was barred from running for mayor of Maputo because the candidature of the list that supported him, the Mozambican Youth Development Association (AJUDEM), ended up with insufficient supplementary candidates, after some of its members withdraw their names.
Samora Júnior decided to run as the head of list of AJUDEM, after his intent to compete in the internal vote of the Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo), ruling party, to choose the party’s head of list to the municipality of Maputo in the local of October, was vetoed for reasons never clarified.
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The Constitutional Council today validated and proclaimed the results of the October 10 municipal elections, which give Frelimo victory in 43 of the 53 municipalities, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) in eight, and the Mozambican Democratic Movement (MDM) in one municipality.
The decision orders that the vote in the municipality of Marromeu must be held again, though it is not yet clear whether this mean it will be repeated in the whole municipality or only in some polling stations.
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Source: Lusa
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