Mozambique Elections: Constitutional Council overturns CNE’s rejection of RD list, annuls allocation of positions on ballot paper

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Mozambique Elections: Constitutional Council overturns CNE’s rejection of RD list, annuls allocation of positions on ballot paper

12:44 CAT | 31 Aug 2023

File photo: Domingo

Mozambique’s Constitutional Council has ruled that the National Electoral Commission (CNE) must accept the lists of candidates for municipal elections of the Democratic Revolution (RD), a party founded by dissidents from Renamo, the country’s main opposition party, and has annulled the results of Tuesday’s allocation of candidate lists on the ballot paper.

The court “orders the CNE to receive the candidacy of the RD party within 48 hours,” reads ruling 11/CC/2023, on that party’s appeal against the CNE’s decision excluding it from the sixth local elections, scheduled for 11 October. “At the same time, to annul the drawing of the definitive lists [order on ballots, without the RD] held on 29 August 2023.”

READ: Top three parties in top three places on ballot paper, as follows: MDM, Frelimo, Renamo | Mozambique

The CNE justified its decision not to accept the RD list – following a decision by the working group created for the purpose – with the fact that the party had formally submitted its lists after the established deadline and that it uses symbols of Renamo itself.

The five judges on the Constitutional Council has now dismissed that stance.

“None of the articles of the Electoral Law provides for a rule that empowers the CNE to delegate the power to decide whether to accept or reject candidacies,” the court stressed. “The working groups set up to receive candidacies are merely mailboxes that must channel the documents submitted by each candidacy to the CNE plenary for deliberation, and therefore lack the power to do so.”

Renamo had argued that the RD uses symbols and acronyms similar to its own, namely the images of André Matsangaísse and Afonso Dhlakama, the deceased founder and president of Renamo.

The RD’s president is Vitano Singano, a former security guard for Dhlakama and a former member of Renamo’s national political committee.

The CNE announced on 18 August that two political parties, including RD, were out of the running for October’s local elections.

“They weren’t excluded; they arrived after the deadline,” explained CNE spokesman Paulo Cuinica, after announcing that of the 31 lists of candidates, 21 had been provisionally accepted by the organisation. “They excluded themselves.”

The period for the formal submission of lists of candidates previously indicated ran from 20 July to 11 August, and ended with the provisional approval by the CNE of lists from 10 political parties – excluding the RD – as well as three coalitions of parties and eight citizens’ groups, for the various local councils to be elected on 11 October, for a total of 11,572 candidates.

Among the lists of candidates initially registered and who will not be running in the local elections were six (five parties and one citizens’ association) that failed to submit their candidacies to the CNE by the deadline. There were also two registered citizens’ groups that “formally withdrew” as well as two parties “whose applications were not received simply because they arrived after the deadline.”

This was the case, according to the CNE, with the RD and Optimistic Pepole for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), which has already publicly acknowledged the delay in its submitting its candidate lists; it was created by dissidents from Mozambique’s governing party, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo).

The president of the RD, Vitano Singano, had previously announced that he was appealing the CNE’s decision to reject its lists: “The allegation made by the CNE, that the Democratic Revolution arrived late, does not constitute the truth.

“What happened was that the RD arrived here, it had no documentation, it was waiting for the documentation,” CNE spokesperson Paulo Cuinica recalled. “They waited for the documentation, it was almost closing time, and we sent our officers to the corridor to call whoever was there with the documentation to present [it]. Unfortunately, they were still waiting for documentation supposedly coming from Manica and when that documentation actually arrived, it was after hours.”

At the time, Cuinica stressed: “the process, when the time comes, closes.”

READ: Mozambique: RD protests against exclusion from Municipal Elections

Rdlogo.rd_ — The Constitutional Council had previously ruled that the RD could not use on its symbol pictures of former Renamo leaders (Andre Matsangaissa and Afonso Dhlakama), and had given the RD ten days to submit a new symbol (pictured). [Image: Revolução Democrática/Facebook]

More than 8.7 million voters are registered to cast their ballots in Mozambique’s sixth local elections since independence – below the initial projection of 9.8 million voters, according to CNE figures.

Voters will on 11 October be choosing 65 new mayors, including in 12 new municipalities, which join 53 existing ones.

In the 2018 local elections, Frelimo won in 44 of the 53 municipalities and the opposition won in only nine: Renamo in eight and the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), the third party nationally, in one.

Source: Lusa