The Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), a Mozambican NGO, calls some of the deadlines for the country’s electoral process to allow civil society participation “tight”.
“Civil society has less than a week to submit applications to the public tender for members of the election commissions of the country’s 12 new municipalities,” which are due to go to the polls on 11 October, the organisation said in its latest bulletin monitoring the electoral process.
The competition was launched on Monday 16 October, and ends on 23 October, a deadline that the CIP considers “very tight”.
The dates “may limit applications from independent civil society organisations,” and facilitate “the application and selection of socio-professional organisations such as the National Organisation of Teachers (ONP) and others, controlled by the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo),” the party in power since independence.
CIP stresses that the election commissions should play an important impartial role and are made up of 15 members, of which nine are from civil society and the remaining six from the parties in parliament.
The NGO also calls others already announced as “tight deadlines”.
“Small parties and citizens’ lists are put at a disadvantage by the changes to the electoral law, made by parliament on 23 December,” according to which the advance notice with which the National Elections Commission (CNE) must announce the number of seats in each municipal assembly was reduced from 60 to five days.
The situation could make it “impossible to find additional candidates if the number of seats is higher than expected”.
The CIP highlights that the municipal elections (taking place this year) and the provincial elections (integrated into the 2024 general elections) are the only ones open to citizen groups “who can campaign on local issues”.
“Listas de cidadãos ran as candidates in 20 municipalities in the previous municipal elections in 2018, and in the past have been elected to assemblies, notably in Maputo, Beira, Nampula, Lichinga, Chiure and Angoche,” it stresses.
