GOVERNMENT AND RENAMO AGREE ON LARGER, POLITICISED CNE

The Mozambican government and the former rebel movement Renamo announced on Monday that they have agreed to change the composition of the National Elections Commission, expanding it from 13 to 17 members, and dominated by political parties.However, the dialogue meetings between the government and Renamo have no power to alter the CNE. The composition of the CNE is enshrined in law, and only the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, can change the law.Last year, the government delegation to the dialogue with Renamo repeatedly stressed that the executive cannot interfere in parliamentary decisions, and the government would not present the Assembly with a fait accompli. But that is certainly what the Monday deal looks like.At the end of the talks, the heads of the two delegations, Transport Minister Gabriel Muthisse, and senior Renamo parliamentarian, Saimone Macuiana, gave few details of their plans for the CNE. They said it would consist of 17 members, with representatives from all three parliamentary parties (the ruling Frelimo Party, Renamo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement, MDM). There would also be representatives from civil society organisations, but nobody from the legal profession. Muthisse and Macuiana did not say how the 17 seats would be divided between the three parties and the civil society representatives.The law passed in 2012, stipulates a 13 member CNE – eight members from the political parties (five from Frelimo, two from Renamo, and one from the MDM), three nominees of civil society organisations, a judge appointed by the Higher Council of the Judicial Magistrature, and an attorney appointed by the Higher Council of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. By throwing off the judge and attorney, the government-Renamo deal will deprive the CNE of much needed legal expertise.The proposals from the dialogue will disappoint the great majority of domestic and foreign election observer groups, who have repeatedly called for a smaller, less politicised and more professional CNE. The government-Renamo deal goes in exactly the opposite direction, proposing a larger and more politicised CNE.The general international trend is that political parties should not sit on, much less dominate, electoral bodies. Frelimo has moved in that direction, and twice – in 2006 and in March 2012 – proposed that the CNE should consist entirely of civil society figures, with no political party representatives at all. The details of how these civil society figures would be appointed were never discussed, because the howls of rage from Renamo led Frelimo to beat a retreat, and produce the current make-up of the CNE.But that wasn’t enough for Renamo. Throughout the two years in which the electoral laws were discussed by a parliamentary commission, in meetings of the leaderships of the three parliamentary groups, and finally in the Assembly plenary, Renamo would not shift from its demand for “parity” – that is, it wanted the same number of seats on the CNE as Frelimo.The Renamo proposal defeated in 2012 was for a 14 member CNE – four members each from Frelimo, Renamo and the MDM, two from extra-parliamentary opposition parties, and none at all from civil society. This would have been a CNE with a built-in opposition majority.The current law was passed by the votes of the Frelimo and MDM parliamentary groups, with the Renamo deputies voting against. Far from accepting the parliamentary vote, Renamo refused to appoint its two members to the CNE, and boycotted the 2013 municipal elections (thus losing every seat it had held in the municipal assemblies). It also set about reversing the parliamentary vote, by trying to strike a deal with the government. For most of 2013, Renamo did not shift from its demand for “parity” on the CNE, and so the rounds of dialogue were singularly unproductive.As from April, Renamo gunmen began attacking police units in the central province of Sofala, and from June Renamo regularly ambushed vehicles on the stretch of the main north-south road, between the Save river and the small Sofala town of Muxungue. It looked as if Renamo was quite prepared to kill, main and destroy in order to change the composition of the CNE. It now looks as if Renamo has dropped its demand for “parity”. In late January, the Renamo national spokesperson, Fernando Mazanga, declared that Renamo is “flexible” and “not dogmatic”, and that the solution “does not necessarily involve parity”.“We are willing to make some concessions”, Mazanga added, “concessions in order to ensure that Mozambicans have free and fair elections, and above all that Mozambicans live in peace”.Renamo now has the CNE’s executive body, the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), in its sights. Muthisse and Macuiana said that the composition of STAE is now under discussion.Currently STAE is the electoral branch of the civil service, and its members are supposed to be appointed on merit. During the discussions prior to the December 2012 vote, Renamo proposed a small army of political appointees staffing STAE at all levels, and looking over the shoulders of the professional election staff.The CNE is already a politicised body, so much so that its chairperson, Abdul Carimo, one of the civil society nominees, warned in January against the “pernicious intervention” by political parties on electoral staff. There were even some members of electoral bodies who set out to serve the parties they support, he added, thus forgetting the oath they took to uphold the Constitution and the laws.With more political party nominees on the CNE, this problem can only worsen.Renamo will submit to the Assembly the consensus on the CNE (and any consensus reached on STAE) as amendments to the electoral legislation. The next sitting of the Assembly is scheduled to begin on 19 February, and the electoral law will be one of the top points on its agenda. No doubt Renamo assumes that the government will oblige the Frelimo parliamentary group to accept the consensus reached in the dialogue.Muthisse said that the two sides have also agreed on the participation of five Mozambican observers in

future dialogue sessions, but he declined to name them.However, according to the latest issue of the independent weekly “Savana”, the five are Anglican bishop Dinis Sengulane, the Vice-Chancellor of the Polytechnic University, Lourenco do Rosario, the former Vice-Chancellot of Maputo’s Eduardo Mondlane University, Filipe Couto, muslim cleric Saide Abibo, and pastor Anastacio Chembele.Renamo seems to have dropped its demand for foreign mediation. “We also reached consensus that international observers, facilitators and negotiators would not be necessary”, said Muthisse.