The Mozambican President, Filipe Nyusi, said this Monday, 15 July, that it is up to the Constitutional Council (CC) to settle disputes over abuse of powers or conflicts of competences between sovereign bodies.
The head of state was speaking at the 6th Assembly of the Conference of Constitutional Jurisdictions of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CJCPLP), which is debating various issues in Maputo, with emphasis on the theme ‘The Constitutional Jurisdiction and Other Powers’.
According to the statesman, sovereignty resides in the people and is exercised through them. For this reason, good governance is ensured by the political model of separation and interdependence of the legislative, executive and judicial powers. “It is true that each of these bodies specialises in a certain aspect of governance, but each has its own specific field of action. It is equally true that they should not act in isolation or in total detachment from the others,’ said Filipe Nyusi, stressing that the mechanisms for decentralising powers help one power to collaborate with another in an interdependent way.
The Mozambican President also spoke about the importance of accepting the system of checks and balances. ‘This system is imposed on everyone and must be accepted by the defenders of democracy,’ he said.
Nyusi said that the Executive encourages the central issue linked to jurisdictional political and financial independence, particularly of constitutional bodies. “Its analysis in this forum should be encouraging. It is also important to address the level of intervention of the bodies to which the Constitution of the Republic attributes competences to sue the constitutional bodies for the purposes of declaring laws unconstitutional and the legitimacy of normative acts,’ he pointed out.
For her part, Lúcia Ribeiro, presiding judge of the Constitutional Council, said that on 1 July 2022, the institution had embraced, for the second time, the challenge of chairing the Conference that brings together the jurisdictions of the Lusophone countries, namely the Constitutional Court of Angola, the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea Bissau, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and East Timor.
“I would like to take this opportunity to particularly greet and thank the respective delegations for coming to Mozambique.
To all of you, illustrious personalities present here, our thanks for agreeing to share this particular and solemn moment of the Conference of Constitutional Courts of Portuguese Speaking Countries,’ said the source.
