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Original Post Date: 2010-09-15 Time: 13:00:04 Posted By: News Poster
Maputo – Alfred Gamito, chairperson of the Commission on Public Administration of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, announced on Tuesday that he expects the Assembly plenary to approve new electoral legislation by May 2012.
This, he believed, would give ample time to prepare for the next municipal elections, due in late 2013, and the presidential and parliamentary elections of the following year.
Gamito’s commission has the task of redrafting the legislation, taking into account the criticisms made of the 2009 general elections by election observation missions, and by the Constitutional Council, the body that proclaims election results and has the final say in electoral disputes. The commission has pledged to consult with all political parties, inside and outside parliament, and with civil society organisations.
But the timetable already shows signs of slipping. The three parties represented in parliament – the ruling Frelimo Party, the former rebel movement Renamo, and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) – had 30 August as the deadline for submitting their suggestions for new electoral laws. None of them did so, and so Gamito extended the deadline to 30 September.
Speaking at a meeting with representatives of extra-parliamentary parties, Gamito said that it was likely that, instead of half a dozen separate laws, the Commission would recommend to the Assembly plenary session, scheduled for November 2011, that everything concerning elections should be consolidated into a single Electoral Code (as proposed by the Constitutional Council).
If the Assembly accepts this, the Commission would finalise that code by the next plenary session, starting in March 2012, and the final vote in plenary could be taken in May. Gamito stressed that the Public Administration Commission is not taking votes on anything. On points where there is no agreement (and past experience suggests there will be a large number of areas where the Frelimo and Renamo members of the commission diverge), the matters will be placed before the plenary for a decision.
Gamito noted that the reports from observer missions were critical, not of the existing laws in themselves, but of “their interpretation and application” – a veiled criticism of the way the National Elections Commission (CNE) had handled the 2009 elections.
The challenge facing the Commission, he suggested, was to rewrite the laws so that included detailed explanations of electoral procedures (this would remove discretionary powers from the CNE).
Among the key issues, he said, was fixing the date for the election. Currently the President fixes the date, at least 180 days in advance. This period, of just six months, has been criticized for not allowing enough time to prepare for the elections properly. As a result various phases in the election preparations overlap.
Then there was the question of the composition of the CNE. Gamito noted that, despite a reduction in the size of the CNE from 21 to 13 members, there are still voices that argue the CNE is too large and unwieldy.
Currently the CNE consists of five members appointed by the parliamentary parties (three from Frelimo and two from Renamo) and eight nominated by civil society organisations. But it is the five political party appointees who make the final choice of eight names out of however many are submitted by civil society. Gamito admitted that this arrangement has been strongly criticized. The observer missions had suggested that the CNE “should be less politicised and more professional”.
A further polemical issue was the paperwork required for parliamentary candidates. Gamito noted that in previous elections this had not been much of a problem, but became a major issue in 2009, when many minor parties found they were excluded because their candidates had supposedly not submitted the necessary documentation. Even the MDM, by no means a minor party, found its candidates excluded from nine of the 14 parliamentary constituencies, and accused the CNE of stealing its documentation.
As for voter registration, Gamito recognised that there is a serious problem with mobile registration brigades. For in principle, voters should cast their ballots at polling stations established at exactly the same places where the registration brigades operated. This principle is inevitably violated in areas where the brigades are mobile.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 14 September 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201009150818.html?viewall=1