
Presidente da Frelimo, Filipe Nyusi, na abertura da II Sessão do Comité Nacional da Associação do Combatentes de Luta de Libertação Nacional (ACLLN)
Maputo, 5 Apr (AIM) – Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Thursday said that Mozambican elections are extremely expensive, and devour money that might otherwise be used to equip troops fighting against islamist terrorists in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.
Speaking in the southern city of Matola at a meeting of the national committee of the Association of Veterans of the National Liberation Struggle (ACLLN) Nyusi questioned in particular the need for the constant re-registration of the Mozambican electorate.
Nyusi is certainly right that the elections are very costly and contain aspects that are downright irrational. These derive from demands made in the 1990s by the main opposition party, Renamo, supposedly to prevent the ruling Frelimo Party from committing electoral fraud.
It was Renamo which insisted that the entire electorate must be registered every electoral cycle (i.e. every five years). Thus the voter card issued to voters for the municipal elections last year will be valid for this October’s general elections, but must then be thrown away. It will be of no use for the 2028 municipal or 2029 general elections.
Someone who first voted in the 1994 general elections, and has voted in every election since then, has been issued with no less than seven voter cards, six of which are now worthless scraps of paper.
The original justification given by Renamo for demanding registration every five years was that otherwise Frelimo would import vast number of citizens from neighbouring countries to vote for it. Because of this fantasy, every five years huge sums are spent on establishing voter registration posts, and recruiting registration brigades.
Occasionally, voices of sanity emerge and suggest that the voter card should be merged with the national identity card, thus ensuring that a citizen would only need one card for all identification purposes. Renamo has rejected all such proposals, and Frelimo is reluctant to force through electoral laws that do not have opposition support.
A further financial burden is the enormous, and highly politicised electoral apparatus. At every level (national, provincial and district or city) there is an elections commission to which the three parliamentary parties (Frelimo, Renamo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement, MDM) appoint members. There are also members who supposedly come from civil society but who, in reality, are filtered through the parties.
Alongside the electoral commissions are the national, provincial and district branches of the executive body, the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE). These too are appointed on a political party basis.
This means that the electoral bodies are top heavy, and full of political appointees. Over the years, Renamo has peremptorily rejected suggestions that the electoral bodies should be smaller, more professional and less political.
Amendments to the electoral legislation used to be discussed in the parliamentary commission that deals with local government. On two occasions (in 2008 and 2012) Frelimo members of the commission suggested removing the political parties altogether from the electoral bodies.
How the non-political members of the election commissions would be chosen was never discussed, because Renamo threw up its hands in horror, and refused even to consider depoliticizing the election bodies. In the parliamentary debates, Renamo deputies could be heard declaring “elections belong to the political parties”.
The movement was in the opposite direction, towards ever larger and more political bodies. The key amendments to the legislation were passed in February 2013, when Frelimo stopped opposing the Renamo demands for what it called “parity” on the commissions and the branches of STAE. No doubt Frelimo had calculated that, as the largest and best organized of the political parties, it would not be harmed by the Renamo proposals.
The most extraordinary change approved in 2013 was an increase in the size of polling station staff. In addition to the four members recruited by STAE, each station would have one staff member appointed by each of the political parties.
This dramatically increased costs – and was also a serious burden for the three parties who had to find volunteers to staff thousands of polling stations.
This had not even been discussed inside the parliamentary commission. It was an idea thrown up in the plenary debates by the MDM, and eagerly supported by Renamo. Frelimo went along with it.
That was a decade ago, and the structure decided then is still in place. Changing it will depend on amending the legislation and, even if this is what Nyusi wants, the chances of passing such amendment before the October elections are slim indeed.
(AIM)
Pf/ (750)