The Mozambican President, Filipe Nyusi, on Friday promulgated the law of punctual revision of the Constitution of the Republic, which postpones the district elections scheduled for 2024, the Presidency of the Republic announced today.
In a statement, the Presidency said that the law, approved on Thursday by the Assembly of the Republic, was “submitted to the President of the Republic for promulgation, and the head of state verified that it does not contradict the Fundamental Law”, so he “promulgated and ordered its publication”.
The Assembly of the Republic of Mozambique approved on Thursday the postponement of the 2024 district elections, without a new date, with the votes in favour of the ruling Frelimo party and against Renamo and MDM, the parliamentary opposition.
The postponement of the ballot was made possible by the approval, in an extraordinary session, of a bill for a punctual revision of the Constitution of the Republic submitted by the bench of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), a party with a qualified majority of 184 deputies in parliament, which has 250 seats.
In Thursday’s final and specialised decision, all 174 MPs from the ruling party’s caucus present at the session voted in favour of the bill.
On the side of the deputies present from the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the main opposition party, 40 voted against, and the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), the third party, four.
The ruling party’s caucus had already voted in favour, in general, while the two opposition caucuses rejected the proposal.
Justifying his vote in favour of Frelimo, ruling party MP and former prime minister Aires Ali said that “there are no objective, legal, material and financial conditions for holding district elections in 2024”.
“The implementation of decentralised district governance bodies presents an imminent and unavoidable potential risk of spreading the constraints of provincial decentralised governance to the 154 districts of the country, generating conflicts of competence between district and municipal decentralisation bodies,” Ali said.
For his part, José Manteigas, Renamo spokesman and MP, accused Frelimo of “lynching and blocking the Constitution, by denying the right of the inhabitants of the 154 Mozambican districts to elect their local rulers”.
“This alleged revision represents the height of dictatorship and overrides the will of the approximately 30 million Mozambicans and is a real block to the development of the districts, which are the visible face of the poverty installed in the country half a century ago,” Manteigas emphasised.
The constitutional revision, he continued, could trigger another cycle of political violence in the country, because the holding of district elections is part of the agreement signed between the Frelimo government and Renamo to end the armed confrontation between government forces and the armed arm of the main opposition party, following the 2014 general elections.
For the MP and Renamo spokesperson, the postponement of the district elections is a constitutional coup, because the decision should be through a referendum, because it interferes with the fundamental right to elect and be elected.
The MDM considered that the postponement of the elections means “unscrupulously tearing up the Constitution”, maintaining that the ballot “was the result of political agreements aimed at bringing peace” to the country.
“This attitude is irresponsible, discriminatory and could cause fratricidal splits in Mozambican society in the short, medium and long term,” said Elias Impuire, a member of the MDM, the third bench of the Assembly of the Republic.
On 10 July, the Mozambican government announced the creation of the Commission for Reflection on the Decentralised Governance Model (Cremod), with the aim of promoting debate on the country’s decentralisation process and public consultation on the best model for devolving power to local communities.
The legal provision for district elections resulted from understandings signed between the Mozambican Government and Renamo, under the 2019 Peace and National Reconciliation Agreement, and aimed to allow the election of administrators, leaving these positions to be occupied by appointment of the central executive, as is currently the case.
Lusa
