Air transport will add further costs of 320 million meticais ($5 million) for the CNE; electoral timetable adjusted – CIP Mozambique Elections

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Air transport will add further costs of 320 million meticais ($5 million) for the CNE; electoral timetable adjusted – CIP Mozambique Elections

3:54 CAT | 12 Dec 2022

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Wikimedia Commons]

Voter registration will begin on 20 April, if the Government accepts the additional cost of 320 million meticais for air transport to bring equipment and material from Hong Kong and from France, as proposed by the CNE.

The Artes Gráficas – Lexton consortium presented last week in Maputo the proposal for transporting the election material by air (option B) and not by sea (see details in Bulletin 5). The initial proposal envisaged transporting the material in three aircraft, but this could prove very expensive for the State: 448 million meticais, the equivalent of 7 million dollars. The State might not be willing to pay these sums. The consortium had to renegotiate with the company that will transport the equipment to Maputo. Hence, an agreement was reached that it would be possible to transport the material in two aircraft, at a total cost of 320 million meticais (5 million dollars).

The two aircraft will carry 200 tonnes of equipment for the voter registration from Hong Kong and from France.

The transport of this equipment involved refitting these planes, and an additional cost, already included in the budget, with fees for the use of airspace with “potentially explosive” material (see Bulletin 13).

The pilot registration will not be affected because the material for this has already been produced and, in principle, it will arrive in Maputo in January.

Electoral timetable adjusted

At the same session the CNE approved the readjusted electoral timetable, in line with the proposal to amend the Election Law, already passed by the Council of Ministers, to be submitted to parliament for discussion and approval.

The proposal envisages altering articles 18, 54 and 132 of Law No. 7/2018, of 3 August, as altered and republished by Law No. 14/2018, of 18 December, which establishes the legal framework for municipal office holders (see Bulletin 14). Essentially, the proposal seeks to reduce the period for presenting candidates’ nomination papers, currently fixed at 120 days; it will also shorten the period for publishing the definitive map of the places where the polling stations will operate, and the period for delivering to the candidates the electoral registers in electronic format – currently the law fixes this deadline at up to 45 days before the elections. Likewise, the time for divulging the number of full and candidate assembly members to be elected in each municipality, currently set at 180 days, will be reduced.

We do not yet have details of the new deadlines fixed by the proposal.

Source: CIP Mozambique Elections