Mozambique: Court orders detention of Venancio Mondlane's finance chief
Date fixed for municipal elections – AIM report
9:09 CAT | 06 Apr 2017
DW (File photo) / The last Mozambican municipal elections were in 2013
The Mozambican government has fixed 10 October 2018 as the date for the next municipal elections.
This date had been proposed by the National Elections Commission (CNE), and maintains the tradition that Mozambican elections are held on a Wednesday.
Announcing the decision to reporters on Tuesday, at the end of the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers (Cabinet), the government spokesperson, Deputy Health Minister Mouzimho Saide, said the CNE must now begin to train staff for the municipal elections, set up the district and provincial election commissions and prepare for voter registration.
No date has yet been set for voter registration, nor is it known how many potential voters there are to be registered. That will depend on figures to be provided by the National Statistics Institute (INE).
The CNE has already estimated the cost of the 2018 municipal elections and the 2019 presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections at 900 million meticais (about 13.6 million US dollars).
There are 53 municipalities in Mozambique, and the number may increase if the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, decides to upgrade more towns to municipal status. But no proposal to create new municipalities is on the agenda of the current sitting of the Assembly.
The largest opposition party, the rebel movement Renamo, boycotted the last municipal elections, held in 2013. They were therefore a contest between the ruling Frelimo Party, and the second opposition force, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM). Frelimo won in 49 of the 53 municipalities, and the MDM in four – but the MDM’s victories included three of the ten provincial capitals (Beira, Nampula and Quelimane).
This time the competition is likely to be more intense, since Renamo has abandoned its boycott and says it will compete in all the municipalities.
Source: AIM
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