Published on 28/09/2024
Mozambique’s highest body, Constitutional Council, in matters of constitutional and electoral law, has thrown out an appeal by the main opposition party, Renamo, against the decision of 12 September by the National Elections Commission (CNE) which allows ballot boxes of the type used in last year’s municipal elections to be used again in the general elections scheduled for 9 October.
Opposition parties regarded the CNE decision as flagrantly illegal since it violates the recently amended electoral legislation which states that ballot boxes must be transparent with a slot that allows the insertion of just one ballot paper per voter.
Boxes used in earlier elections had a wider slot, which allowed fraudsters to slip several ballot papers folded together into the box at the same time.
In its appeal, Renamo said that the CNE had usurped powers which belong to the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic. The Assembly had unanimously amended the electoral law to introduce the transparent ballot boxes with a narrow slot, and the CNE did not have the power to undo that change, and revert to the old type of ballot box.
When the Constitutional Council asked for its reaction to the Renamo appeal, the CNE insisted that it has the power to approve the type of materials to be used during the voting, including the ballot boxes.
The CNE added that, even if it had enough money to acquire new ballot boxes, there was not enough time to import them before the general elections scheduled for 9 October. It claimed 45 days would be needed to produce the new boxes, and a further 90 days to transport them to all the polling stations.
The CNE said it had acquired 14,775 ballot boxes of the old type, which are currently being cleared through customs. In addition, there are 64,106 ballot boxes used in last year’s municipal elections that can be used again this year.
The CNE argued that there were “insuperable obstacles” to implementing the ballot box provisions of the amended legislation this year.
And the Constitutional Council, rather than insisting on compliance with the law, agreed with the CNE that the time available before the elections was “manifestly insufficient” to implement the changes needed.
It blamed the Assembly of the Republic for this – the Assembly had approved very late the amendments to the legislation. The Council failed to mention that this delay was in part because President Filipe Nyusi had vetoed the first draft of the amendments, which delayed their promulgation by more than a month.
The only alternative to the path chosen by the CNE would have been to postpone the elections, which the Council rejected.
It claimed that the amendments only affected “material operations hat have not yet begun”, and that any material operations that were already under way and in their final phase “continue to be governed by the law which was in force at the moment they began”.
Thus, the Constitutional Council rescued a law that had already been revoked and declared that it would remain in force.
