End of the line for Samora Machel Jr’s candidacy?

The National Election Commission (CNE) voted on Tuesday by majority vote to exclude the list headed by Samora Machel Jr. from the October 10 municipal elections in Maputo. At a meeting convened to study the lists of candidates for the ballot, the CNE followed, with nine votes in favour of exclusion, seven votes against and one abstention, the same line that had removed Renamo candidate Venâncio Mondlane. “All the lists were analysed because today was the day of the CNE to decide on the lists to be accepted or excluded,” CNE spokesman Paulo Cuinica explained to our reporter at the end of Thursday’s session.

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Of the excluded lists, the highlight falls on AJUDEM whose removal, according to Cuinica, was due to the fact that they did not have enough substitutes to fill the vacancies opened by the resignation of the four members in the list for the municipal council who claimed to have been included against their will.

“The list does not have sufficient substitutes to continue in the process,” said Cuinica, noting that “a list must have effective and alternate candidates – a minimum of three substitutes, and that is what the list lacks”. Asked if there was not still time to replace the renouncing candidates, Cuinica was categorical.

“The applications are delivered up until the last day of the prepositions. After that, no more applications are accepted,” he said. If they wish to continue in the electoral process, AJUDEM and its head of list can therefore only appeal to the Constitutional Council. The representatives of Frelimo and MDM in the CNE voted against the candidacy led by Samora Machel Jr, while those from Renamo and civil society voted to accept the list. The President of the CNE, Abdul Carimo, abstained.

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Contacted by our reporter, AJUDEM declined to react to the CNE decision, claiming that it had not yet been notified. According to a source in the movement, AJUDEM became aware of the rejection only via the media, and was analysing the matter with its team of lawyers.

There is room for replacement

While the CNE believes that there is no time left to replace those who insist on being taken off the list, some lawyers disagree. In an opinion piece published in yesterday’s edition of O País, constitutionalist Teodato Hunguana says that allowing substitution would be more conventional. “Just as parties, coalitions of parties or groups of citizens have the prerogative of replacing heads of the list by virtue of their withdrawal, they also have the same right in relation to the other members of the list. Giving rise to the publication of a new list in relation to the withdrawing candidates, under the terms of paragraph 2 of article 2 of this law,” Hunguana wrote. In his view, “this is an unquestionable prerogative of parties, coalitions of parties or groups of citizens. Because otherwise it would introduce an element of extreme insecurity, and the possibly of manipulation and bad faith, which the electoral law cannot provide for or guarantee against,” he wrote.

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Unfair rejection

Fernando Mazanga, one of the Renamo representatives on the CNE, was indignant at the position taken by the organ of which he is a member. He told O País that the most sensible thing was for the CNE to allow AJUDEM to replace the members who resigned. “An individual is free to be on the list or not, but, as a late renunciation, it was necessary for AJUDEM and its representative to be notified by the CNE within five days to fill the vacant places of those individuals, who have reportedly resigned of their own free will,” Mazanga said.

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Samora Machel Jr. is the son of the first President of Mozambique, who died in 1986 in an aviation accident in South Africa (at the time of the racist apartheid regime)