Parliamentary group set up on amending election laws

Maputo, 17 Feb (AIM) – The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, has set up a working group to draft amendments to the country’s electoral legislation, in the hope that new and consensual laws can be passed in the coming parliamentary sitting.

The sitting will begin on 28 February and is scheduled to last until 23 May. The scandal of last year’s municipal elections, marked by major fraud in several municipalities, has ensured that the sitting will be dominated by the attempts to change the electoral legislation.

The political parties represented in the Assembly have already submitted their amendments. At a Thursday press conference the spokesperson for the parliamentary group of the ruling Frelimo party, Feliz Silvia, said he hoped a “more comprehensive” law would emerge from the debates.

“We think it is worth continuing to work with due calm and serenity, so that we obtain more comprehensive legislation”, he said. The amendments should be the work of the entire Assembly, he added, and not just the leadership of the parliamentary groups.

The main opposition force, Renamo, has submitted amendments which, it claims, are designed to prevent fraud and ensue transparency.

Perhaps the most important change proposed by Renamo is a ban on changes to election results made in secret by the National Elections Commission (CNE), its executive body, the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariarat, and by the highest body on electoral matters, the Constitutional Council.

In past elections, changes have been made to the results without any explanation. For example, in the 2023 municipal elections, the Constitutional Council switched tens of thousands of votes from Frelimo to the opposition parties (notably in Maputo and Matola), but gave no justification for doing so.

Renamo would ban these secret changes, and replace them with recounts. It proposes: “The District Law Court and the Constitutional Council may not, of their own initiative, transfer votes contained in the polling station minutes and results sheets (“editais”), and the entire process of ascertaining the electoral truth contained in the minutes and editais must be carried out by recount”.

The Constitutional Council last year grabbed for itself, without any clear legal justification, the sole right to order new elections in response to suspected fraud. Renamo is now proposing that district courts and the Public Prosecutor’s Office could also have the power to order recounts and new elections. Any recount would have to be in the presence of a magistrate.

Renamo also wants many more cameras present during the polling station counts. “In the interests of electoral transparency”, says its proposal, “the counting of votes may be accompanied by immediate publicity of the proceedings, and party delegates may capture images, sound, film or live for public consumption.”

Tabulation of votes at district or city level is currently done secretively by STAE, but Renamo proposes that STAE staff putting the numbers into a spreadsheet be monitored by election commission members to compare the data and ensure numbers are not being changed, and similarly for typing out handwritten minutes.

Renamo wants to make maximum use of the Internet, so that the public knows the results as soon as possible. Its proposal says that, at city or district level, within 20 days a scanned version of all original polling station and district election commission minutes and results sheets would be posted on an internet site. No more than five days later, the Provincial Elections Commission should post its minutes and editais.

Within 20 days of submitting the final results, the CNE would post on the Internet the original editais and minutes from all levels – polling stations, district, and province. In the past, much of this information has been difficult to obtain. With the results from all levels posted on the Internet for all to see, anomalies and downright fraud would be much easier to spot.

Among other changes proposed by Renamo is a provision that the polling station chairperson during the count must read out the series number of each ballot paper to show that it comes from this polling station. This is intended to prevent ballot box stuffing.

Renamo wants counts carried out without interruption. Under the proposal there would be a break of no more than an hour between the close of voting and the start of the count. The counting would then continue without a break until the edital is posted on the walls of the polling station, and copies are distributed.

(AIM)

Pf/ (744)