Mozambique Elections: EU, UNDP to provide €1M to raise transparency in election process

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Mozambique Elections: EU, UNDP to provide €1M to raise transparency in election process

11:18 CAT | 12 Mar 2024

File photo: Lusa

The European Union (EU) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will support a project to “strengthen democracy” and “electoral processes” in Mozambique with €1 million, the two institutions announced on Monday.

In a communique, the institutions state that the project will be in force until December, 2025, and has “particular relevance” in the context of the general elections on October 9th for presidential, legislative, provincial assemblies and provincial governors, and in the post-election period.

Among other aspects, the financing, worth almost US$1.1 million (around €1 million), will allow the “strengthening of the technical capabilities of the main electoral actors”, to “promote credible and inclusive electoral processes” and “increased transparency in the electoral process”, with “greater public disclosure and sharing of information by the Electoral Management Bodies with the electorate”.

It also aims to encourage “improved planning of operations and processes during the electoral cycle, including the management of crises such as natural disasters, security threats and political violence” and will contribute to “improving the effectiveness and transparency of dispute resolution mechanisms elections”, for “technical assistance to the Constitutional Council, the National Elections Commission and the Supreme Court”.

The financial support for this project, continues the statement, joins that of other international partners, namely the governments of Norway, Canada, Spain and Germany.

The four-year “Strengthening Democracy and Electoral Processes in Mozambique” UNDP and partners project is “designed to strengthen the democratic and electoral system” in the country, based on previous electoral support (2018 to 2020) and “in the lessons learned”, explain the two organisations.

The project was developed in response to a formal request from the Government of Mozambique, the recommendation of the Needs Assessment Mission (NAM) conducted by the United Nations in April, 2021, and reports of international election observers on the 2019 elections.

The European Union will have observers at the October general elections, which will choose a new president, the president of the EU Political and Security Committee announced on 28 February in Maputo.

The announcement was made by Ambassador Delphine Pronk, after a meeting with Mozambique’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Verónica Macamo, who addressed the invitation to the EU observation mission.

“The government requested an EU observation mission for the elections October. And I would also like to salute Mozambican resilience and strength, the strength of democracy, the strength of institutions,” Macamo said at the time.

Mozambique will hold general elections on October 9th this year, including for the president. The current head of state and leader of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), Filipe Nyusi, can no longer compete, as he has reached the constitutional limit of two terms.

The president of the EU Political and Security Committee did not say what type of observation the mission will carry out, nor how many members it will have. “I don’t know yet. So we have to evaluate, we will first send experts to Mozambique very soon. And then we will also evaluate based on who needs it and what they ask for, and what we can deliver,” Pronk said.

“But I think that the importance of electoral observation is recognized by both sides,” she added.

This year’s general elections in Mozambique, which follow the troubled municipal electoral process of October 2023, whose electoral results were strongly contested by opposition parties and civil society organisations, will cost almost 20 billion meticais (€289 million), the National Elections Commission (CNE) previously announced.

Source: Lusa