25 October 2007
Maputo — Elections are not an end in themselves, but a means to achieve such goals as consolidating citizenship and building a more inclusive society, declared Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Thursday.
Opening a five day meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Frelimo Party, Guebuza said it was precisely because elections are a means and not an end, that the Frelimo leadership had heeded the calls from Mozambican society to postpone the elections for provincial assemblies scheduled for 16 January.
He admitted that right from the moment he had fixed the date of the elections (acting on a proposal from the National Elections Commission), there had been expressions of concern.
As the date for the elections approached, so those voices had grown louder - civil society organisations, religious bodies, extra-parliamentary political parties, academics and journalists had all declared that the elections should be postponed.
Frelimo, said Guebuza, "cannot ignore these popular feelings. As a party of dialogue and harmony, always in tune with the interests of the Mozambican people, Frelimo bears a responsibility within our society and must continue to bear it".
That was why the Frelimo Political Commission had last week instructed the Party's parliamentary group to submit a constitutional amendment that would allow the provincial elections to be postponed.
Guebuza noted that the Frelimo decision had been widely welcomed by the public, judging by the debates in the media, and the messages the party had received. The only criticism, he noted, was that Frelimo had been very late in proposing a postponement.
Guebuza hoped that "good sense will prevail" in the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, and that "once again the interests of the Mozambican nation will take precedence over private interests".
For Frelimo, the Assembly provides "the time and the place for dialogue and debate, as well as the building of consensus". (This is a clear rejection of the demand by the former rebel movement Renamo that the decision on postponing the elections should be taken outside of parliament, and into negotiations between the top Frelimo and Renamo leaderships.)
The proposed constitutional amendment made no difference to the current voter registration exercise, and Guebuza urged all Frelimo members and the public at large, to go to the voter registration posts and obtain their new voter's card.
"Only when they are in possession of a voter's card can our members, and the public, vote for Frelimo and its candidates in the forthcoming elections", he stressed.
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