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Mozambique: Commission advises against holding district elections in 2014 – AIM | Watch
7:18 CAT | 02 May 2023
Screen grab: TVM
The Commission set up by the Mozambican government to reflect on the pertinence of holding elections for district assemblies has predictably recommended that district elections should not be held in 2024.
When a package of decentralization amendments was inserted into the Mozambican constitution in 2018, they included a commitment to set up district assemblies, and to hold the first elections to these bodies in 2024.
At the time, nobody asked whether this was feasible. Could 154 district assemblies really be elected at the same time as presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections?
The Constitution merely said that the district assemblies would be elected. It did not state what powers they would have, how they would be financed, or even how many members would sit in them. This was all left for future legislation.
For the past year, President Filipe Nyusi has been calling for reflection on the viability of holding district elections – much to the fury of the opposition parties who argue that, since the 2024 district elections are written into the Constitution, they must he held.
The Commission, known by the acronym CRED, was set up to advise the government on the district elections. Right from the start, the main opposition parties, Renamo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), denounced CRED as illegitimate, and refused to have anything to do with it.
CRED was supposed to consist of “cadres with recognized competence and experience in local government and public finance”, but its membership has never been publicly announced. With the opposition boycotting CRED, there is no doubt that politically the Commission is dominated by the ruling Frelimo Party.
On Friday, the coordinator of CRED, Justice Minister Helena Kida, presented the Commission’s report which concludes that Mozambique does not meet the necessary conditions to advance with district elections next year.
She said this conclusion was reached after public consultations across the entire country over the previous two weeks. Kida did not say how many people took part in these consultations, and would not tell reporters how much CRED has cost.
Constitutional amendment
The Minister said that the model of decentralized provincial governance is not yet duly consolidated “because of the complexity of the process itself and of the general context, characterized by the crisis provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic, by extreme climatic events, and by terrorism in Cabo Delgado province”.
Mozambique, she added, “does not have sufficient resources to guarantee expansion of the decentralization model to the districts”.
Among CRED’s recommendations is a further amendment to the Constitution. Indeed, it is clearly essential to remove the commitment to 2024 district elections from the Constitution, at the earliest opportunity, otherwise the government and the parliament will be guilty of violating the country’s fundamental law.
The exact nature of such a constitutional amendment is not yet clear, but CRED is recommending that the mention of district elections should remain in the Constitution, but without any time frame.
CRED also recommends the deepening of dialogue with the opposition forces in order to seek consensus on the lack of the necessary condition for district elections.
Almost immediately Renamo made it clear that there could be no consensus. Renamo spokesperson Venancio Mondlane told a Friday press conference that CRED is “unconstitutional”, and so Renamo does not recognize its results.
“District elections are a constitutional imperative”, he declared. As for claims the country does not have the money to embark on district elections, he suggested that foreign donors will pay.
“Since 1994, there has been no election in Mozambique, either general or municipal, which the state could finance out of the state budget. All the elections we held in Mozambique were supported by the international community”.
Mondlane seemed quite content for this situation to continue indefinitely.
Source: AIM / TVM
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