Mozambique: Parliament sitting in August with constitutional amendment to postpone district elections on the agenda – Lusa

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Mozambique: Parliament sitting in August with constitutional amendment to postpone district elections on the agenda – Lusa

2:53 CAT | 08 Jun 2023

File photo: Lusa

The Assembly of the Republic of Mozambique will meet in an extraordinary session in August to debate a constitutional revision to postpone the district elections scheduled for 2024, various sources in the Mozambican parliament told Lusa.

The extraordinary session will discuss a proposal submitted by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), the ruling party.

The scheduling for August aims to allow the President of the Republic to comply with legal deadlines for setting the date of the general elections in 2024.

Assembly of the Republic deputies will also debate other matters, with the agenda being “fine-tuned” between the benches, a parliamentary source said.

READ: Frelimo submits draft amendment to change Constitution, postpone district elections | Mozambique

At the end of the last ordinary session of parliament, on May 31, Frelimo asked for consensus to amend the Constitution and postpone the district elections, claiming that the country needed popular consultation on the decentralisation model, an argument refuted by the opposition.

“It is our expectation that the approval of this revision will be, yes, by consensus, because it results from the aspirations of all our people,” said the head of the Frelimo bench, Sérgio Pantie.

“The obligation” to hold the first district elections in 2024 must be “removed from the constitutional text”, through an understanding between the three parties with parliamentary seats, Pantie said.

Despite the July call for consensus, five years after the last constitutional revision, Frelimo will be able to approve the specific amendment to the fundamental law alone and postpone the district elections as a result of its qualified majority of 184 deputies in the 250-seat parliament.

Viana Magalhães, head of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the main opposition party, accused Frelimo in the last parliamentary session of resorting to “dictatorship and tyranny” to deposit in parliament the proposed constitutional revision aimed at making the postponement feasible.

The 2024 district elections were inscribed in the Constitution in 2018, after negotiations between the Mozambican government and Renamo within the scope of the 2019 Peace and National Reconciliation Agreement, aiming to allow the election of administrators, leaving these positions to be occupied by appointment of the central executive.

Source: Lusa