Maputo, 13 May (AIM) – Mozambique’s National Elections Commission (CNE) has approved the registration of all 43 political parties, coalitions and groups that applied to participate in the presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections scheduled for 9 October.
Although CNE spokesperson Paulo Cuinica boasted of this number as if it were a great success, in fact most of the organisations are not political parties in any meaningful sense of the term.
Only three of them are represented in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, namely the ruling Frelimo Party and the opposition Renamo and MDM (Mozambique Democratic Movement). At local level, a relatively new party, Nova Democracia (New Democracy – ND) is the opposition in the municipal assembly in Gurue, in the central province of Zambezia.
The rest of the “parties” are tiny groups that appear during election years, in the hope of obtaining money from the state budget. Those which stood in the last general elections in 2019 mostly took less than one per cent of the vote.
These mini-parties have few members and few votes. Many do not even have websites.
All the parties and groups approved by the CNE now have 30 days (from 13 June to 10 May) to submit the nomination papers for their parliamentary candidates and for members of the provincial assemblies.
(AIM)
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