“Ridiculous” To Reject Reflection ON District Elections
Maputo, 24 Jan (AIM) – It is “ridiculous” that there are some people who do not want even to reflect on the feasibility of holding elections for district assemblies in 2024, declared Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Monday.
Amending the Mozambican constitution to include district assemblies was part of the price demanded by the main opposition party, Renamo, for signing a peace agreement with the government in 2019. But nobody knows exactly what the district assemblies will do, and whether their powers will overlap with those of the provincial assemblies or the municipal assemblies.
It is not even clear how many members will sit in each district assembly, or how much the elections will cost.
Last year, Nyusi called for a “reflection” on the feasibility of holding the district elections in 2024. This elicited a howl of rage from Renamo, which accused the President of trying to violate the Constitution. He returned to the matter in December when, in his annual State of the Nation address to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, he again questioned the viability of holding the district elections in 2024.
Speaking at the Monday ceremony where he swore into office new provincial Secretaries of State, Nyusi said he had launched a debate about “our continuity down to district level. I didn’t say it should stop, I said there should be a reflection”.
Those who did not want to reflect, he added, included “the same people who yesterday did not want decentralization down to provincial level. It’s ridiculous”.
But those who see no objection to holding district elections are also some of the most respected figures in Mozambican politics, including former President Joaquim Chissano, and the former Chairperson of the Constitutional Council, the highest body in matters of constitutional law, Hermenegildo Gamito.
Chissano could see “no objection” to holding the elections in 2024, while Gamito told reporters that the district elections are envisaged in the Constitution and the Constitution must be respected. Since the elections had been written into the Constitution, there was no way round it, and they must be held. It was not even worth raising the matter, Gamito said.
There are currently 154 districts (and rather more if urban districts are included). Holding district elections will certainly complicate national elections. Voters will already be faced with three ballot papers in 2024, for the presidential, parliamentary and provincial assembly elections. Adding a fourth, for the district assemblies, would inevitably lengthen the time taken to count the votes and declare the results. Even discounting the possibility of deliberate fraud, tired polling station staff, working since 05.00 in the morning, are bound to make more mistakes, if the count is extended deeper into the night.
Just as with the municipalities and the provinces, the district assembly elections will be organized on a party list basis. The head of the list of whichever party wins will become the new district administrator. The administrator heads a district government, known as the District Executive Council, which answers to the District Assembly.
The Constitution says nothing else. The powers of the District Administrator and of the District Executive Council are to be fixed by laws which do not yet exist.
Even the size of the district assemblies are not yet known. But it seems certain that they will provide hundreds, if not thousands of new jobs, with wages and allowances adding to the pressures on the state budget
Those new jobs give significant powers of patronage to the political parties participating in the elections, and doubtless this is why Renamo is so insistent that the elections should go ahead.
(AIM)
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