Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
18 June 2009
Maputo — The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Thursday rejected a bill on election observation, proposed by the opposition Renamo-Electoral Union coalition, which would have stripped any state employee of the right to observe elections.
Under the current electoral legislation, it is the National Elections Commission (CNE) which has the power to draw up regulations on election observation. Since 1994, successive CNEs have drawn up regulations, and previously there has been no complaint from Renamo.
Indeed, deputies from the ruling Frelimo Party pointed out that much of the Renamo bill has simply been plagiarized from the current regulations, issued by the CNE in October 2008.
Renamo argued that by enshrining election observation in a law, rather than in a set of regulation, it was obeying a suggestion made by the Constitutional Council, the body that rules on election disputes, and validates election results.
Renamo was guilty of selectively quoting from the Council's ruling of 15 January which validated the results of the November 2008 municipal elections. From the Renamo speeches, it would have been impossible to guess that the Council actually praised the CNE's regulations.
The Council said "it is beyond doubt that with these regulations on observation, an important step has been taken towards the national and international credibility of elections and democracy in Mozambique".
The CNE's regulations expanded the scope of election observation, whereas the previous CNE, at the time of the 2004 general elections, had caused great controversy by restricting access by observers to stages of the vote tabulation. The Council praised the CNE for bringing the Mozambican rules on observation into line with the international and regional conventions that Mozambique has signed
The Council did also suggest that the matter could definitively be resolved by including election observation in a new law. The CNE's responsibilities would then be restricted to implementing that law. However, Frelimo did not believe that Renamo was following the spirit of the Council's recommendation when it simply copied huge chunks of the CNE's regulations - and then added a clause which deprived citizens of their constitutional rights.
This clause stated that nobody who has any tie with the state, the government, the civil service, or the municipalities can be an observer "in the area of jurisdiction to which they are functionally tied". In other words nobody employed by the state can be a domestic election observer in the city or district where they work.
Renamo was thus banning teachers, the vast majority of whom work in state schools, from election observation, unless they were prepared to travel away from their home areas. The same was true for doctors and other health workers, and many other professionals.
Worse still, members of the central and provincial governments, provincial directors, district administrators, district directors, and members of the armed services, the police and the intelligence service would be banned from any form of election observation. Renamo did not explain what objection it had to off-duty policemen exercising a right of citizenship such as observing elections.
Frelimo argued that these restrictions are in flagrant breach of the constitutional article on universality and equality, which states "all citizens are equal before the law, enjoy the same rights and are subject to the same duties".
In the debate, Renamo deputies insisted that their bill would guarantee transparency, but Frelimo retorted that all the worthwhile parts of the bill were already in the CNE regulations.
One Renamo deputy, Anselmo Vitor, praised the parallel counts which observers can undertake, and which give "reliable projections of the results". He failed to mention that such parallel counts were undertaken in both the 2004 general elections and the 2008 municipal elections and the results they gave were remarkably close to the official results announced by the CNE.
Frelimo deputy Ana Rita Sithole accused Renamo of "trying to deceive public opinion" by casting itself as an innovators, whereas all it has done was to copy out CNE documents, and then add some real changes, which happened to be unconstitutional.
One of Renamo's most strident deputies, Antonio Muchanga, claimed that Frelimo's opposition to the Renamo bill was proof that it plans to commit fraud in the general and provincial elections scheduled for 28 October. He claimed that fraud was "the only way for Frelimo to hold on to its parliamentary majority, and for its candidate (Armando Guebuza) to win the Presidency".
Casimiro Huate of Frelimo pointed out that when it was discussed in the Assembly's Commission on Agriculture, Regional Development and Public Administration, the Renamo members of the commission were unable to defend the bill, and had to ask members of the Renamo parliamentary leadership to speak to the Commission.
Huate was convinced that the bill had never been discussed among Renamo parliamentarians, but had been foisted upon them. Any bill is supposed to be accompanied by the signatures of those proposing it - but Huate said that Renamo just produced a photocopy of the list of signatures used for earlier Renamo bills.
"This is just a diversion, and we will not pander to your disorganization", Huate told the Renamo benches.
When the bill was put to a vote it was defeated by 149 votes to 60. Thus fully a third of the 90 Renamo deputies were absent, a sign of the crumbling of the opposition parliamentary group, as several of its best known figures prepare to join the new opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), founded by the mayor of Beira, Daviz Simango.
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Guilty of selectively quoting from the Constitutional Council's?
Does Mr. Fauvet mean the Constitutional Council's findings were biased? Unfounded, perhaps?
Who is after all afraid of transparent polls?