Maputo, 14 Aug (AIM) – Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, has denied entering into an unholy alliance with the ruling Frelimo Party to pass amended election legislation earlier this month.
The amended law was controversial because it stripped the district courts of their power to order a recount of votes in cases of an election dispute.
But at a Maputo press conference on Tuesday, the Renamo national spokesperson, Marcial Macome, claimed that many other changes introduced in the amendments are highly positive. “We cannot abdicate from the gains made in more than 20 articles, just because of one article”, he said.
A key change, he argued, was that the amendment allows observers and journalists to be present at all stages of the count, without any ban.
Furthermore, the police can only be called into a polling station in cases of extreme necessity, and only when the entire polling station staff (MMVs) agree. Since the parliamentary political parties, including Renamo, have the right to appoint an MMV at every polling station, this means that the police can only enter a polling station with Renamo’s consent.
The election results at any polling station can only be validated in the presence of all the station staff . The amendments state that the results cannot be validated if any MMV has been thrown out by the police, except in cases expressly envisaged in the law.
The powers of staff to refuse to receive complaints from candidates are severely trimmed. The new law says that any MMV who, without justification, refuses to accept complaints or protests from candidates, can be punished with a year’s imprisonment and a fine of four to five times the monthly minimum wage.
Any MMV who tries to deny candidates or their agents access to polling stations, or to exercise their legally defined rights, can be punished with six months imprisonment.
These clauses, if implemented, could make it impossible to repeat some of the abuses that characterized last year’s municipal elections.
The amended law also says that the ballot boxes must be transparent, and the slot at the top must only be wide enough to allow one ballot paper at a time to enter. This is a precaution against ballot box stuffing.
Macome said there had been a risk of losing all the amendments, unless Renamo conceded on denying district courts the power to order recounts.
Frelimo had made it clear that, without removing the article on the district courts, the entire bill would be scrapped. So Renamo had agreed to a trade-off, the amendments would pass, but without the clause on district courts.
(AIM)
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