Mozambique's main opposition party, Renamo, has once again insisted that the first elections for district assemblies must be held in 2024. At a Maputo press conference on 10 April, the Renamo General Secretary, Clementina Bomba, dismissed an announcement by the government that it will set up a commission to reflect on the pertinence or otherwise of holding district elections.
This commission, said Bomba, was no more than an attempt by the ruling Frelimo Party to make the district elections impossible. "The ultimate aim of this commission is to legalise the decision already taken by the Frelimo Party to deny the district elections and override the Constitution itself", she declared. Bomba regarded this as a coup d'etat against the democratic rule of law.
It was a scheme, she said, "which intends to alter the established legal order, and to radicalise the dictatorship and tyranny of the regime".
So far, the Commission only exists on paper. Nobody has yet been appointed to it, and Bomba's uncompromising approach makes it unlikely that anybody from the opposition will sit on it.
Bomba added that the main reason why the final military base of Renamo, in the central district of Gorongosa, has not been closed is "the lack of commitment of the government" to the agreements it had signed with Renamo.
She protested that the government is not yet paying pensions to demobilised Renamo fighters.
The election of district assemblies was included in the amendments to the Constitution passed in 2018, but was never seriously discussed at that time. There are 154 districts. Electing assemblies in all of them in 2024, at the same time as the elections for the President, the parliament and the provincial assemblies, would be a formidable task.
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The Constitution merely states that the district elections shall be held in 2024. It does not explain what powers the district assemblies will have, and how these will be balanced against the existing municipal and provincial assemblies. It does not even state how many members each district assembly will have, much less how the assemblies will be financed.
Years were allowed to pass without any consideration of how district assemblies could operate. One possibility, aired on social media now, is that the elections might be held initially in only a few districts, starting with the districts with the greatest economic potential.
This was the gradualist approach followed when establishing the municipal assemblies in the 1990s.
