Mozambique's main opposition party, Renamo, will choose its mayoral candidates for October's municipal elections within the next fortnight.
The spokesperson for the Renamo Political Commission, Alfredo Magumisse, cited by television station STV said the matter was discussed at a Political Commission meeting on 30 June. He said the meeting fixed dates for the Renamo provincial and district conferences and a subsequent meeting of the National Commission. Between them, these meetings will fix the party's strategies for the municipal elections.
The local conferences will begin on 7 July. Renamo central brigades, Magumisse said, will work in the provinces from 3 to 10 July, following, assisting, and monitoring the election of candidates to members of the municipal assemblies in each district. The successful candidates will then be approved by the National Commission, which will meet in the central province of Sofala in the second fortnight of July.
Mayors are no longer directly elected - instead the first name on the list of the party which wins most seats in the municipal assembly will become the mayor.
Magumisse added that the National Commission will discuss "strategies for winning the elections faced with a process in which many voters did not register". The voter registration, held from 20 April to 3 June, was marked by allegations of serious irregularities, which Renamo argues deliberately disenfranchised citizens living in areas believed to favour the opposition. "There are politically strategic aspects that I cannot reveal here", said Magumisse. "There are municipalities where our adversary mobilised people from one municipality to register in another. The party has to find a way of dealing with these situations".
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He added that only after this series of meetings will Renamo register to take part in the municipal elections.
Although registration began on 26 June, so far only four parties, all of them very small, have delivered their registration papers to the National Elections Commission (CNE),
The latest to do so was the Mozambican Humanitarian Party (PAHUMO), which was set up by a Renamo dissident, Cornelio Quivela, who was once a deputy in the country's parliament the Assembly of the Republic. PAHUMO won one seat in the municipal assembly in the northern city of Nampula in 2013 but lost it in the subsequent local elections in 2018.
The other three parties who have registered are the Ecology Party, the Electoral Union (UE) and the Reconciliation Movement of Mozambique (MRM), none of which have any representation in the municipal or provincial assemblies, let alone in the national parliament.
Among the documentation that each competing party must submit to the CNE are copies of its Statutes and symbol, the certificate proving that it is duly registered, a list of members of the party leadership, and the identification of the party's election agent.
