Assembleia da Republica
Maputo, 9 Jun (AIM) – The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, will not debate the amended electoral legislation until July.
Contrary to initial expectations, there will be no extraordinary sitting of the Assembly to discuss the election laws. Instead, according to a report by the independent newssheet “Carta de Mocambique”, they will just go on the agenda of the ordinary parliamentary sitting scheduled to begin on 10 July.
One major implication of this is that there can be no alteration to the electoral timetable, under which all nomination papers for candidates for the presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections must be submitted by next Monday, 10 June.
The amendments approved by the Assembly on 30 April, but subsequently vetoed by President Filipe Nyusi, would have extended the deadline for candidates to 25 June.
The National Elections Commission (CNE) is working on the assumption that the 10 June deadline is definitive. Thus, even if the Assembly overrules Nyusi’s veto, that deadline cannot be changed.
Nyusi sent the package of amendments back to the Assembly for “re-examination” on 30 May. Nyusi had taken an entire month, supposedly to determine whether the set of short amendments was in line with the Mozambican Constitution.
These amendments were approved unanimously and by acclamation on 30 July – thus the ruling Frelimo Party, which has an overwhelming majority in the Assembly, saw nothing wrong with them in April, and must have been surprised when Nyusi sent them back.
The key issue in the amendments is the role of district and city courts. During last year’s municipal elections, several district courts saw that fraud had been committed, and either cancelled the elections in certain polling stations or ordered recounts.
This horrified the Constitutional Council, the country’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law. The Council gave itself the power to overrule all other courts, and announced that only the Council has the power to annul elections or order recounts.
Nyusi seems to have come down on the side of the Constitutional Council, although its interpretation of the law is contested by the Supreme Court, by the Bar Association, and by the Mozambican Association of Judges.
“We don’t quite understand what the Head of State’s doubts are about the laws, given that they were approved by consensus in parliament”, one prominent deputy of the main opposition party, Renamo, Antonio Muchanga, said.
“It seems to us that the intention, with this veto by the President, is for things to continue as they were during the municipal elections, to allow Frelimo to continue with the saga of fraud in the forthcoming presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections”, said Muchanga.
The fate of the amended legislation is clearly in the hands of Frelimo. It can either capitulate before the demands of the Constitutional Council and remove the power of district courts to annul elections, or it can decide that the amendments are fine as they are, in which case Nyusi will have no choice but to promulgate them, and order their publication in the official gazette, the “Boletim da Republica”.
(AIM)
Pf/ (519)
