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Mozambique: Frelimo Chooses Election Candidates
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
22 October 2007
Posted to the web 22 October 2007
Maputo
Although Mozambique's ruling Frelimo Party has called for the postponement of the elections to provincial assemblies, scheduled for 16 January, it has pressed ahead with selecting its candidates.
At a Maputo press conference on Monday, the Frelimo Secretary for Mobilisation and Propaganda, Edson Macuacua, said the election of 804 full candidates and 402 supplementary candidates for the provincial assemblies ended on Sunday.
The elections had been held in three phases - a primary contest involving Frelimo zone committees, followed by election of candidates by district party committees, and the final composition of lists by the provincial committees. Macuacua said that about 500,000 Frelimo members had been involved in choosing the candidates.
35 per cent of the candidates are women, he added, 20 per cent are youths, and 10 per cent are veterans of the war for independence from Portuguese colonial rule.
Frelimo, said Macuacua, had been holding internal party elections ever since its foundation in 1962, and the approach of elections at any level of the Mozambican state was "an opportunity to strengthen inner-party democracy".
"The democratic election of Party candidates gives them more credibility and legitimacy, since the Frelimo candidates were proposed by Party members at the grass roots, and were selected by secret ballot", he said.
Frelimo's decision to seek a change in the Constitution in order to postpone the elections was not in contradiction with selecting candidates, he argued. Quite apart from the fact that the elections will be held eventually, Frelimo cannot be sure that its proposed constitutional amendment will pass.
For changing the constitution requires a majority of 75 per cent in the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic. Since neither Frelimo nor the opposition Renamo-Electoral Union coalition has such a majority, any constitutional amendment requires the support of both parliamentary groups.
"Our opposition is unpredictable", said Macuacua. "As long as a decision has not been taken by the Assembly, Frelimo will continue to work according to the existing timetable".
In any case, with or without a constitutional amendment, the current voter registration exercise would continue, and Macuacua insisted that "all citizens are urged to go and register, to ensure that they have the right to vote and to be elected".
Asked about Renamo claims, made in the Assembly earlier this month, that the severe computer problems that have plagued the voter registration are a Frelimo conspiracy to disenfranchise Renamo supporters, Macuacua declared that such accusations "are devoid of any basis", and merely reveal "the depths of Renamo's despair".
Claims of Frelimo malpractice "are a Renamo strategy to justify in advance its likely heavy defeat in the next elections. We are used to this type of groundless accusation which no longer deceives anybody".
The choice of its candidates showed that Frelimo was ready to fight an election campaign. Frelimo was proposing a postponement, not because of any organisational problems of its own, insisted Macuacua, but because of pressure from the public against holding elections in mid-January (which is at the height of the rainy season, when many roads are likely to be impassable).
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"Frelimo is better prepared than any other party to fight and win these elections", he declared.
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| Copyright © 2007 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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