Maputo — A group of tiny political parties have demanded that the international community impose "immediate and unconditional sanctions against the Mozambican government" because they have been excluded from competing in some or all of the constituencies in the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

The decision to exclude these parties was taken by the National Elections Commission (CNE) and confirmed by the appeals body, the Constitutional Council. Neither the CNE nor the Council forms part of the government, which cannot interfere in their decisions.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the minor parties also demanded the immediate cancellation of the current election campaign, and the immediate sacking of all members, not only of the Constitutional Council and of the CNE, but also of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the Mozambican civil service.

They called on President Armando Guebuza to convene an extraordinary sitting of the Mozambican parliament "to analyse the political and electoral process", and demanded the creation of a transitional "government of national unity".

For good measure, they also demanded that the African Union and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) should intervene "to invalidate the electoral process".

If these demands are not met, the parties threatened, they would embark upon "a popular uprising on a national scale" during the election campaign, and on polling day itself, 28 October. They would also call for "total abstention" by the electorate, and would hold the Mozambican government responsible "for all violent acts that may occur".

15 parties have signed this document, but none of them have any relevance on the Mozambican political stage, none of them publish anything, none of them hold regular public meetings, and none of then even has a website.

The most significant extra-parliamentary party in Mozambique, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), has not joined this group. Its leader, the mayor of Beira, Daviz Simango, is running for the Presidency and shows no sign of pulling out.

The parties claim they have "more than two million members and supporters", but none of them have ever been able to muster as much as one per cent of the vote in a national election.

The 15 parties are: 1. PIMO (Independent Party of Mozambique). This has had a small measure of local electoral success. It elected one member of the Beira Municipal Assembly in the November municipal elections, but lost the three seats it had previously held in Nampula, Cuamba and Angoche. It won 17,960 votes in the 2004 parliamentary election (0.59 per cent of the total).

2. PARENA (National Reconciliation Party). Won 18,200 votes in 2004 (0.6 per cent).

3. PASOMO (Social Broadening Party). Won 15,740 votes in 2004 (0.52 per cent).

4. PT (Labour Party). Won 14,242 votes in 2004 (0.47 per cent) 5. SOL (Social-Liberal Party). Won 13,915 votes in 2004 (0.46 per cent).

6. PE-MT (Ecology Party). Won 12,985 votes in 2004 (0.4 per cent).

7. UD (Democratic Union). The coalition of this name has repeatedly changed its membership. In 2004 it won 10,310 votes (0.34 per cent).

8. PANAMO (Mozambique National Party). Did not stand in 2004. Its leader, Marcos Juma, is a convicted fraudster. In 2001 the Maputo City Court gave him a two year suspended prison sentence for his part in a racket to produce counterfeit US dollars.

9. UNO (National Opposition Union), a previously unknown coalition of three tiny groups. Has never stood in any election.

10. UE (Electoral Union), a new coalition that has nothing to do with the now disbanded Renamo-Electoral Union, which was the opposition force in parliament for the past ten years. 11. UPM (Mozambique Patriotic Union). Unknown and untried.

12. PUMILD (United Party of Mozambicans for Democratic Freedom). Unheard of before July.

13. MPD (Patriotic Movement for Democracy). Another new party that has sprung into existence for this year's elections.

14. UDM (Union of Mozambican Democrats). This new party openly boasts that it wants to tear up the Mozambican constitution, abolish the separation between church and state, and institute a government based on "divine law".

15. PPLM (Liberal Progressive Party of Mozambique). This party announced it would stand in the 1994 elections, took 50,000 US dollars from a UN trust fund set up to assist parties in that campaign, and then did not run a single candidate.

The seven groups which stood in 2004 thus won slightly more than 100,000 votes between them. The total size of the Mozambican electorate is 9.8 million.

The statement from the parties also claims that the rulings from the Constitutional Council are "political", and that "an outside hand" dictated their exclusion from the elections.

At no point does this statement deal with the issues of substance raised by the CNE and by the Council - namely that the parties presented incomplete lists with names of candidates (dozens of candidates in some cases) that were not accompanied by any of the necessary documents.