Presidential candidates given 30 days extra to submit signatures

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Presidential candidates given 30 days extra to submit signatures

8:36 CAT | 17 Jun 2019

After the Constitutional Council (CC) noticed a change in the just published electoral law, on Friday the CC ruled that registration of presidential candidates will not end today, but on 16 July.

To stand for president, a candidate must submit to the Constitutional Council (and not to electoral authorities) a set of documents and 10,000 notarised signatures of voters. The electoral law says this must occur 120 days before the election, which for the 15 October election is today, 16 June. The deadline was 15.30 yesterday afternoon. Because yesterday was Sunday it had been expected that this would be extended to Monday.

But on Friday the Constitutional Council issued a ruling point out that the just-published new electoral law (2/2019 de 31 de Maio) has a clause tucked in at the very end (numbered article 276-A) changing three deadlines for this year. As well as the presidential submission, they are:

+ The National Elections Commission (CNE) now has 105 days before the election to announce the number of parliament (Assembleia de Republica, AR) seats for each province, which is 1 July. This is important because party lists must contain as many candidates as there are seats for the province, plus at least 3 supplementary candidates.

+ Parties must submit their candidates for the AR to the CNE 75 days before the election, which is 31 July.

So far, documents and signatures have been submitted for only two presidential candidates, Filipe Nyusi of Frelimo and Daviz Simango of MDM. The delay will help Renamo, which seems in some internal turmoil, as well as two new small parties which are making a serious attempt to present parliamentary and presidential candidates and gain the youth vote.

The CC does check at least a sample of the signatures has rejected candidates that only reached 10,000 by including fake signatures, often just copied from the electoral role, and duplicates.

By Joseph Hanlon

Source: 2019 General Elections - Mozambique Political Process Bulletin