Maputo — Just ten days from the start of the official election campaign, ahead of the presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections scheduled for 9 October, the government has still not made funds available for the campaigning activities of the political parties.
One of the oddities of Mozambican elections is that tiny political parties, that have been dormant for years, crawl back onto the stage in the hope of receiving money out of the state budget. Rather than expecting their members and supporters to back them, they depend on funding from the state.
Even the two parliamentary opposition parties, Renamo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), are demanding campaign money from the state.
Throwing money at the political parties is included in the election law. The National Elections Commission (CNE) should have made the money available 21 days before the start of the campaign. But last Monday the CNE spokesperson, Paulo Cuinica, said releasing the funds is entirely dependent on the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
But Renamo believes that the delay is deliberate. The Renamo spokesperson, Marcel Macome, cited by the German agency, DW Africa, complained that the ruling Frelimo Party is not affected by the delay "because it lives off the public treasury. It is already producing its materials'.
Frelimo, however, says it does not rely on a state handout for its campaigning, since it raises money through its members (and it claims that Frelimo now has over six million members).
The MDM election agent, Silva Cheia, said the party would already be producing its propaganda material, if the funds were available.
"We need about 45 days', she claimed, "because this material is often produced outside the country, given the high costs of printing them inside Mozambique'.
There are 35 parties standing for the Mozambican parliament. Apart from Frelimo, Renamo and the MDM, the only party with any representation in municipal or provincial assemblies is Nova Democracia (ND). The other 31 parties have few members, and are invisible outside of election periods. Most of them do not even have a website, but they expect the state to subsidise them.
