Renamo: "We are challenging legal thinking in the country" - Mozambique Elections
FILE - The Mozambican parliament is due to meet on Wednesday, January 24. [File photo: Social Media]
The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, is due to meet on Wednesday to discuss amending the law on voter registration, making it possible to change the dates announced by the National Elections Commission (CNE) of 1 February to 16 March.
There is general consensus that voter registration in February is impractical, since February is the height of the Mozambican rainy season.
Roads in parts of the country are likely to be impassable, making it difficult or impossible to transport equipment to voter registration posts in remote areas. Potential voters may be dissuaded from registering if they have to queue for hours in pouring rain.
Furthermore, the consortium of the Lexton/Artes Grafica companies, responsible for the technical side of voter registration, will simply not have the necessary supplies and equipment ready before the start of April – a fortnight after registration is supposed to have finished, according to the CNE calendar.
Announcing the agenda for the extraordinary sitting a week ago, the spokesperson for the Assembly’s governing board, its Standing Commission, Alberto Matukutuku, said “The amendment proposed is intended to allow the relevant authorities to change the dates for registration to a period outside the rainy season”.
All the political parties represented in the Assembly – the ruling Frelimo Party and the two opposition forces, Renamo, and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) – agree that voter registration should not be held during the rains.
But, according to a report in Tuesday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Carta de Moçambique’”, the opposition parties were surprising to find that the Standing Commission has also put on the agenda amendments to various other parts of the electoral legislation.
The Standing Commission met throughout Monday, but could reach no consensus. Frelimo wants to discuss the entire electoral legislation this week, but Renamo insists that it will not discuss points that were not included on the notice from the Commission calling the extraordinary sitting.
Renamo spokesperson Arnaldo Chalaua told “Carta de Mocambique” that, if it really is urgent to discuss the other amendments raised by Frelimo, the Standing Commission should call yet another extraordinary sitting of the Assembly plenary.
The electoral legislation is complex, said Chalaua, and cannot reasonably be discussed in just two days. Indeed, to amend the entire package of electoral laws, a Commission should be set up to consult all interested parties in order to draw up a consensual text.
The spokesperson for the Frelimo parliamentary group, Felix Silva, denied the Renamo claim that the notice from the Standing Commission calling the extraordinary sitting contradicts the documents sent to the 250 deputies last week.
He said the agenda for the sitting was always the entire package of electoral legislation, and not just the law on voter registration. Furthermore, changing the dates for voter registration has a knock-on effect on the other electoral laws, and so they too must be amended.
With no consensus, the agenda for the extraordinary sitting is likely to go to a vote on Wednesday morning. Since Frelimo has an absolute majority in the Assembly, it will win the vote, and force through the agenda points it wishes to discuss.
Only if constitutional amendments are involved would a two thirds majority be required, which Frelimo cannot muster on its own.
According to the bulletin on the elections published by the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), the CNE has an alternative calendar in mind, in which voter registration will start on 16 March. The Frelimo proposal would fix 7 May as the date for the end of registration.
Among other key changes proposed by Frelimo, according to CIP, are that the CNE must announce the number of seats in each constituency by 5 June, instead of 12 April, and all candidates must submit their nomination papers by 25 June.
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