Mozambican Constitutional Council was excessively legalistic in rejecting Renamo appeal – lawyers

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Mozambican Constitutional Council was excessively legalistic in rejecting Renamo appeal – lawyers

1:07 CAT | 10 Sep 2018

File photo: Notícias

Lawyers on Friday said that the Constitutional Council of Mozambique was “excessively legalistic” in rejecting the appeal of the Renamo candidate for the Maputo municipality, Venâncio Mondlane, and had fallen short of society’s expectations.

The Mozambican Constitutional Council last week rejected an appeal lodged by the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the country’s main opposition party, against its ban on the party’s top-ranking candidate inthe October 10 municipal elections.

Speaking to Lusa, Mozambican lawyer and human rights activist João Nhampossa said that the Constitutional Council had been excessively legalistic, noting that the body focused on the illegitimacy of Renamo and Venâncio Mondlane’s claim that the norms that dictated the rejection of candidature by the National Commission of Elections (CNE) were unconstitutional.

“The Constitutional Council was excessively legalistic in that it limited its ruling to the illegitimacy of Renamo’ requesting it declare the deliberation of the National Elections Commission unconstitutional, refusing to comment on the merits of the case itself,” João Nhampossa said.

The Constitutional Council could have gone further and ruled on the validity of Venâncio Mondlane’s candidacy, as was the expectation of Mozambican society, he said.

“Although at the end of the appeal it filed Renamo also asked for a declaration of unconstitutionality, Renamo’s claim is clear: that the Constitutional Council should have ruled on the validity of Venâncio Mondlane’s candidacy,” Nhampossa added.

Eduardo Chiziane, a lawyer and professor at Eduardo Mondlane University, said that the Constitutional Council ruling was a demonstration of the dependence of politics on the law.

“Political parties should not organise their candidacies [solely] according to the political weight of their candidates; they must be attentive to legality, because politics and law are twin brothers,” Chiziane said.

Baltazar Faela, a lawyer and researcher at the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), also feels that the Constitutional Council has been excessively legalistic, placing the political sensitivity of the issue in second place in a context in which the country is committed to the search for a lasting peace.

“As the first consideration of Mozambican society is the guaranteeing of peace, I think the political weight of the moment could have been taken into account,” Faela said.

Source: Lusa