Maputo — The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Wednesday altered the country's electoral law, despite a noisy demonstration by opposition deputies who claimed that the majority Frelimo Party was "killing democracy'.
The change approved looks minor - it states that the President of the Republic must fix the date of the general (presidential and parliamentary) elections 15 months in advance, rather than the 18 months stipulated in the current law.
But knocking three months off the deadline has considerable implications for anyone who wants to change the constitution. The Constitution states that it requires a 75 per cent majority of the deputies to amend anything in the Constitution in the five years subsequent to the previous amendment.
The presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2024 must be held in October. If 15 October is the chosen date then, under the current law, the President of the Republic must announce that date by 15 April this year - which is less than a month away.
The Frelimo amendment would allow the President to postpone the announcement by three months, to mid-July.
A mid-April announcement would necessarily include elections to district assemblies, as envisaged under the 2018 amendments to the Mozambican constitution.
Frelimo, however, is opposed to district elections in 2024 - but the only legal way to avoid them is to amend the Constitution, and Frelimo does not enjoy the super-majority of 75 per cent required to change the Constitution before the five year period is up.
So, amending the Constitution in mid-April requires the votes of at least 188 of the 250 deputies, and there are only 184 Frelimo deputies. Passing the Frelimo amendment would require at least four opposition deputies to defect, and not a single opposition deputy has indicated a willingness to vote with Frelimo.
But if the electoral law changes, so that the announcement of the general election date does not have to be made until mid-July, then the majority required is only two thirds of the deputies. In that case, Frelimo would only need 167 votes to carry a constitutional amendment.
The Frelimo argument is that the extra three months would provide time for a serious debate on whether the district elections should be held. In December, President Filipe Nyusi said a commission would be set up to discuss the viability of the elections. This would be possible, if the decision on the general election date is postponed, but not otherwise.
The Frelimo group proposal states "since there is a need to expand this reflection and to consult various opinions and sensitivities about the opportunity and pertinence of holding the district elections in 2024', then the deadline for setting the deadline for the general elections must be discussed first.
The two opposition forces, Renamo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), are well aware that, if the Frelimo amendment is passed, then there will be no district elections in 2024.
So on Wednesday both opposition parties resorted to boycotting the Assembly. The MDM group walked out of the chamber, but the Renamo group opted to stay, waving placards and making an enormous racket on the plastic horns known as "vuvuzelas', and more usually seen on football terraces than in parliaments.
The Assembly chairperson, Esperanca Bias, called for a 15 minute interval, which lasted for 40 minutes. In the interval, nothing changed. Neither side moved an inch.
When the session resumed, so did the noise of the Renamo vuvuzelas. But Bias controlled the Assembly microphones, and so, with some difficulty, it was possible to make out what the Frelimo deputies were saying, despite the Renamo orchestra.
Bias would have been within her rights to call in the police to remove the Renamo group. But this is far from the first time that Renamo has disrupted a parliamentary session, and Frelimo appears to have decided that it is easier to allow Renamo deputies to make as much noise as they like, rather than expel them from the chamber.
In the end, votes defeat vuvuzelas, and Frelimo's votes outnumber Renamo' vuvuzelas. The Frelimo spokesperson, Feliz Silva, went so far as to call the Renamo noise a form of democracy.
He told reporters Frelimo wanted a full debate in the Assembly, "but Renamo does not want a democratic debate'.
Silva insisted that Frelimo does not want to amend the constitution "on our own' - but, if necessary, it would do so.
The spokesperson for the Renamo group, Arnaldo Chalaua, told reporters that Frelimo's proposed amendment was both "Machiavellian' and "Marxist', and painted Renamo as defenders of democracy.
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There can now be no doubt that the elections of district assemblies will not take place in 2024, if at all.
When the Constitution was last amended, in 2018, the district elections were included on the insistence of Renamo. Frelimo caved in, fearing that without a commitment to district elections, Renamo would not demobilize its militia.
There are serious problems with the proposal to set up district assemblies. So far nobody knows how many seats each assembly would have, or how much they would cost.
Furthermore, several districts cover exactly the same area as municipalities. This is the case, for example, with all the provincial capitals. Renamo has not yet explained the difference between a district assembly and a municipal assembly, each covering the same area.
Under the Renamo proposal, in 2024, citizens in many urban areas would vote, not only for the President and for parliament, but for three different local assemblies - municipal, provincial and district. Nobody yet knows what the difference in attributes and powers would be between these assemblies.
