At the last minute on 30 May, President Filipe Nyusi vetoed revisions to the electoral law agreed by consensus by parliament a month earlier. The veto ensures Frelimo victory in elections on 9 October, even though it was over a seemingly minor technical point. The electoral law gives the National Elections Commission (CNE) and Constitutional Council (CC) the right to order recounts of votes. The 30 April approved law was a compromise, saying only the CC and CNE can order reruns, but district courts could order recounts, which Nyusi did not accept.
The change would have stopped Frelimo repeating the theft last year of municipal elections of Maputo and Matola. It seems likely that Frelimo in parliament (AR, Assembleia da República) simply had not noticed.
Renamo won by a large margin in municipal elections in Maputo and Matola, and Renamo was able to prove this by showing to this bulletin its copies of more than 1600 polling station results sheets (editais). District election commissions gave victory to Frelimo. Renamo appealed in one Maputo district, Mamubukwana, where the court accepted that editais submitted by the district election commission (CDE) were faked and written after the election. But the district court could do nothing. (The 20 Oct 2023 detailed ruling was published in Canal de Moçambique 25 October 2023.) And despite Renamo having proof of victory and the district court agreeing proof of forgery, the CC rejected the appeals and gave victory to Frelimo.
The law change would have given district courts the right to order recounts in this situation, which was much too dangerous for Frelimo. Meanwhile the CC argued that the constitution gives it total control of elections and argued vociferously that it would not give up that power. This reading of the constitution is contested by both the Supreme Court and the bar association (Ordem dos advogados). President Nyusi was apparently anxious to retain a compliant and all-powerful CC that would ensure a landslide victory on 9 October.
Both the CC and CNE act in total secrecy with no justification or explanation of their decisions. District-ordered recounts would have opened a window, and that could not be allowed.
The constitution (art 162) gives the President 30 days to promulgate or veto legislation, and Nyusi waited until the very last day to issue his veto, when parliament was no longer in session. This makes it impossible to contest in the short term and creates a number of calendar problems the law revision also tried to resolve.
There might be a special session of parliament, but without calendar changes and recounts to deal with, there are few remaining issues
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Calendar changes fall; all candidates to be submitted by Monday
The main purpose of the 30 April changes was to give candidates an extra 15 days to submit documents – 10,000 notarised signatures for presidential candidates and six documents for assembly candidates including a no-criminal-record certificate which opposition candidates often find takes a long time to obtain. The vetoed law set a new date of 25 June, but the CNE calendar sets the date as Monday 10 June, and this now in force.
However, a further problem is that the CNE calendar violates the law. There are separate and often quite different laws from President and national parliament (2-2019) and for provincial assemblies and governor (3-2019). Law 3-2019 sets 11 July as the deadline for provincial candidates but the CNE calendar does not accept this and sets 10 June. It is unclear if the CNE will follow the law and allow another month for provincial candidates.
A further problem is that the CNE still has not announced how many candidates are required. The number of candidates must be at least the total number of seats plus three extra – but can be many more. So far the CNE has published the 2019 numbers of seats and STAE has distributed an estimate of seats for this year to the main parties. Shorter time and not knowing how many candidates are needed put a squeeze on opposition parties, who may end up having lists rejected.
Two useful changes approved in April will not go ahead.
+ After voting polling station staff were to get a one hour break, but then be required to continue counting without a break until the edital is posted. The revised law also stressed that the edital must be posted. (This was to prevent a new fraud where polling station heads refused to write and post an edital where Frelimo had not done well, and just suspended the counting and left.)
+ District elections commissions would have been required to inform press and media of when and where the district count was to take place.
