Mozambique Elections: MDM wants PGR to investigate electoral offences - Watch
Alfredo Gamito. Photo: Lusa
The heads of list model in municipalities, which will be introduced in Mozambique in the October 10 elections, weakens mayors and gives more power to the parties, says the former State Administration minister who 21 years ago led the process for the creation of municipalities in Mozambique.
The election by head of list “weakens the president of the municipal council, because, at any moment, the municipal assembly, if it does not agree with the action of the mayor, can oust him or her and replace him or her with another one within the list”, Alfredo Gamito says.
An elected mayor from a list has no legitimacy and power of his own, because he is hostage to the party and to the municipal assembly, he says.
“The candidate or head of the list, as it is now called, for Marrupa or Maringue [municipalities in the interior of the country] is decided in Maputo, and results from a decision of a central body of the party.”
Under the head of list formula, he continues, party machines can impose candidates without any community base and with little real knowledge of the real problems there.
Gamito says that the model by which municipality presidents were elected in a separate ballot gave greater power and legitimacy to the mayors and eliminated conflicts among municipal powers.
“Our model [approved in 1997] is innovative because we created an organ called the municipal assembly and an organ called the president of the council, elected independently of each other,” he says.
Despite expressing an unfavourable opinion regarding the model that will be introduced in the October 10 elections, Gamito says that the population recognises the importance of municipalisation, because the experience of the last 20 years has generated positive results.
“I have absolutely no doubts [about the gains from municipalisation]: the towns and cities have a bigger budget than they had, and can better identify development needs and how to solve them,” he says.
Reconstruction dictated the introduction of municipalities in 1998
The reconstruction of the administration “dismantled” by the war and the delivery of power to the communities dictated the introduction of municipalities in 1998, Gamito says.
“The war lasted 16 years and almost dismantled the administration of the state and the public administration. We had great reforms to implement,” he recalls.
The imperative of state reform led the government of the Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo) and the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the main opposition party, to include in the 1992 General Peace Agreement a clause providing for the holding of the first local elections one year after the first general and multiparty elections in 1994.
However, the first municipal elections were only held in 1998.The former Minister of State Administration points out as the main reasons for the delay the need to have a legal package governing them approved by consensus of the various sectors of Mozambican society, and to mobilise resources.
“We defended the approval of the law in the Assembly of the Republic, and created the conditions for the first elections to be held in 1998. They should have been held in 1997, but there was a situation that prevented this.”
Although the law was approved by consensus, the former minister points out that Renamo boycotted the first local elections on the grounds of a perceived lack of transparency in the electoral law.
“Renamo, although it participated in this whole process, did not participate in the first municipal elections, but I think this had to do with the fact that the previous model required a lot more of the parties, and they had to be highly organised in terms of cadres.”
Gamito says that the model of municipalisation approved in 1997 in Mozambique had the merit of providing for the separate election of the president of the municipal council and of the members of the municipal assemblies, giving the two bodies their own legitimacy.
On the other hand, to allow a more effective process, the law stipulated the principle of gradualism, which advocates the progressive assignment of municipal status to the cities and towns of the country.
“The project of creation of the municipalities foresaw that it would begin with five cities, but soon we thought of 11, later 23 cities, and then it stood at 33 cities and towns”, Gamito told Lusa
Gradualism
“Gradualism was explained by the fact that the state itself did not have the financial, material and human capacity” to immediately implement municipalisation throughout the country “and there was a feeling that one should always move forward safely.”
Twenty years after the first municipal elections, the former minister of State Administration takes a positive view of the process and considers that the exercise of local power by the communities also works as a buffer against conflicts, since political parties have the expectation of governing in some municipalities even if national targets fail.
The fifth municipal elections in Mozambique will be held in 53 municipalities – 75 districts will be excluded from the poll, since they do not have any city or village with municipal status under their administrative jurisdiction.
According to the Centre for Public Integrity, and based on figures from the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration, the total number of voters registered is 6,824,582.
A total of 21 parties, coalitions or groups of citizens appear on the ballot papers, although only the three parliamentary parties will compete in all municipalities: the Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo), the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) and the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM).
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