Porta-Voz da CNE, Paulo Cuinica, falando na Conferência de imprensa sobre o balanço da fase de submissão das candidaturas rumo às Sétimas Eleições Gerais- Presidenciais Legislativas e da Quartas dos Membros das Assembleias Provinciais e do Governador de Província, marcadas para o dia 09 de Outubro do ano em curso. Foto de Santos Vilanculos
Maputo, 11 Jul (AIM) – Mozambique’s National Elections Commission (CNE) admitted on Thursday that it is unable to issue definitive lists of candidates for the country’s parliamentary and provincial elections this week, as originally planned.
The CNE blamed this delay on the Constitutional Council, the country’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law. The Council had ordered the CNE to receive the lists of candidates from Democratic Revolution (RD), a tiny breakaway from the main opposition party, Renamo.
The demand from the Council had a “perverse impact” on the timetable for the elections, complained the CNE in a Thursday statement. The RD had only delivered its lists of candidates on 5 July, and the CNE must now check all the names to see whether these candidates are eligible.
Since the voter roll is fully computerized, the CNE can check whether any candidate appears on more than one list – which could be lists of candidates for different parties, or lists for the same party in different constituencies.
The CNE said it had been doing this cross-checking for the lists submitted by other parties when it was surprised by the Constitutional Council’s demand to add the RD’s lists.
The CNE announced that it will not be able to decide which lists have been accepted and which rejected until 17 July, by which time it should have checked the RD lists against those from all the other parties.
Despite the CNE’s protest, this delay is entirely due to its own failure to obey the electoral law.
The CNE delegated the reception of candidates’ nomination papers to a “reception team”. If this team found that any candidate had incomplete or irregular paperwork, it should refuse to accept the nomination papers, but return them to the party concerned to be corrected within the next five days.
The “reception team” threw out the RD’s lists because they had been received past the deadline of 15.30 on 10 June.
But the CNE must do this work itself, and cannot delegate the task to any team or commission or working group. The Constitutional Council said that the electoral legislation clearly states that it is the CNE which checks parliamentary candidates’ nomination papers.
The law, the Council declared, does not allow the CNE to delegate these powers to any team or working group. For such delegation of powers to be legitimate, there must be provision for it in the electoral law. And there is no such provision.
The Council declared that the CNE decision on the delegation of powers is illegal, and it ordered the CNE to receive the nomination papers for the RD candidates.
On Thursday morning, the CNE summoned journalists to a press conference, but CNE spokesperson Paulo Cuinica had nothing further to say, other than “we are working on assessing the candidatures”.
When asked why journalists had been obliged to waste their time at a press conference where there was no news, Cuinica replied “anyone who wants to participate in the institution’s press conferences may do so, and this who don’t want to participate don’t have to”.
(AIM)
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