16 September 2009
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Maputo — The chairperson of Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE), Joao Leopoldo da Costa, failed to appear at a debate organised by the country's Youth Parliament on Wednesday, at which he was supposed to explain the CNE's decision to exclude 27 parties from some or all of the constituencies in the forthcoming parliamentary election.
He did not send any of the other 12 members of the CNE to represent him, and so there was no debate at all - merely a series of speeches criticizing the CNE.
The Youth Parliament insists that it delivered a formal invitation to Costa, and was under the impression that it had been accepted. Attempts by AIM to seek clarification from the CNE's official spokesperson were unsuccessful.
Three people were scheduled to debate with Costa - Salomao Moyana, director of the weekly paper "Magazine Independente", Alice Mabota, chairperson of the Human Rights League (LDH), and Antonio Frangoulis, a deputy in the current parliament for the ruling Frelimo Party.
All three were highly critical of the CNE. Moyana admitted that excluding parties might have been the correct decision, but the way in which it was done was certainly not. He claimed there were a series of stages envisaged in the electoral law which the CNE appears not to have followed. He accused the CNE of "unequal treatment" of the parties, and of avoiding dialogue with them.
Frangoulis suggested that the CNE had violated not only the law, but also the Mozambican Constitution, while Alice Mabota remarked "There are some people who think the country belongs to them and not to others".
Mabota suggested that the CNE was threatening national unity, and that if an uprising or bloodshed occurred, it would be the CNE's fault. She said the CNE was restricting the suffrage, and thought it was "an aberration" that people who had been convicted of serious crimes are unable to stand in the election.
These three speeches were moderate compared with what followed. From the floor leaders of several of the excluded parties spoke to denounce the CNE. Repeatedly they called Costa "a liar", and claimed that all their papers had been in order.
Antonio Palange, of the United for Mozambique (UPM) coalition, demanded that Costa "resign immediately". He thought it intolerable that Costa should suggest that he, Palange, a medical doctor, was too incompetent to produce valid nomination papers.
Mateus Banze, of the Patriotic Movement for Democracy (MPD), claimed that, because Costa has the status of a minister, and other CNE members the status of deputy ministers, "The CNE has been bought! The CNE is doing what it's told!"
He even suggested that would-be candidates cannot provide adequate identification, because of the delays in obtaining identity cards, and the impossibility of obtaining alternatives, such as birth certificates. (Yet this did not prove an insuperable obstacle for either the ruling Frelimo Party, for the main opposition party, Renamo, or, in most constituencies, for the previously unheard-of Party of Freedom and Democracy, PLD).
Magalhaes Ibramurgy, general secretary of the Independent Party of Mozambique (PIMO) waved aloft a file which he said contained 120 sets of documents for the party's candidates in Nampula (for the parliamentary and provincial assembly elections). He had wanted to confront Costa with this file, since the CNE said that PIMO had supplied just a list of names for Nampula, with no supporting documents.
There were calls for the annulment of the elections, and a man named Job Mutumbene even called, to strong applause, for "demonstrations to prevent the elections from taking place".
In the absence of anybody from the CNE, all such remarks went unchallenged, and the precise reasons for excluding each of the parties remained unclear.
At the end of the meeting members of the youth parliament called for a demonstration against the exclusion of the parties. This proposal was overwhelmingly accepted, and the chairperson of the youth parliament, Salomao Muchanga, promised that within the next three days he will announce the exact form of the demonstration.
Fonte: Allafrica
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Maputo — The chairperson of Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE), Joao Leopoldo da Costa, failed to appear at a debate organised by the country's Youth Parliament on Wednesday, at which he was supposed to explain the CNE's decision to exclude 27 parties from some or all of the constituencies in the forthcoming parliamentary election.
He did not send any of the other 12 members of the CNE to represent him, and so there was no debate at all - merely a series of speeches criticizing the CNE.
The Youth Parliament insists that it delivered a formal invitation to Costa, and was under the impression that it had been accepted. Attempts by AIM to seek clarification from the CNE's official spokesperson were unsuccessful.
Three people were scheduled to debate with Costa - Salomao Moyana, director of the weekly paper "Magazine Independente", Alice Mabota, chairperson of the Human Rights League (LDH), and Antonio Frangoulis, a deputy in the current parliament for the ruling Frelimo Party.
All three were highly critical of the CNE. Moyana admitted that excluding parties might have been the correct decision, but the way in which it was done was certainly not. He claimed there were a series of stages envisaged in the electoral law which the CNE appears not to have followed. He accused the CNE of "unequal treatment" of the parties, and of avoiding dialogue with them.
Frangoulis suggested that the CNE had violated not only the law, but also the Mozambican Constitution, while Alice Mabota remarked "There are some people who think the country belongs to them and not to others".
Mabota suggested that the CNE was threatening national unity, and that if an uprising or bloodshed occurred, it would be the CNE's fault. She said the CNE was restricting the suffrage, and thought it was "an aberration" that people who had been convicted of serious crimes are unable to stand in the election.
These three speeches were moderate compared with what followed. From the floor leaders of several of the excluded parties spoke to denounce the CNE. Repeatedly they called Costa "a liar", and claimed that all their papers had been in order.
Antonio Palange, of the United for Mozambique (UPM) coalition, demanded that Costa "resign immediately". He thought it intolerable that Costa should suggest that he, Palange, a medical doctor, was too incompetent to produce valid nomination papers.
Mateus Banze, of the Patriotic Movement for Democracy (MPD), claimed that, because Costa has the status of a minister, and other CNE members the status of deputy ministers, "The CNE has been bought! The CNE is doing what it's told!"
He even suggested that would-be candidates cannot provide adequate identification, because of the delays in obtaining identity cards, and the impossibility of obtaining alternatives, such as birth certificates. (Yet this did not prove an insuperable obstacle for either the ruling Frelimo Party, for the main opposition party, Renamo, or, in most constituencies, for the previously unheard-of Party of Freedom and Democracy, PLD).
Magalhaes Ibramurgy, general secretary of the Independent Party of Mozambique (PIMO) waved aloft a file which he said contained 120 sets of documents for the party's candidates in Nampula (for the parliamentary and provincial assembly elections). He had wanted to confront Costa with this file, since the CNE said that PIMO had supplied just a list of names for Nampula, with no supporting documents.
There were calls for the annulment of the elections, and a man named Job Mutumbene even called, to strong applause, for "demonstrations to prevent the elections from taking place".
In the absence of anybody from the CNE, all such remarks went unchallenged, and the precise reasons for excluding each of the parties remained unclear.
At the end of the meeting members of the youth parliament called for a demonstration against the exclusion of the parties. This proposal was overwhelmingly accepted, and the chairperson of the youth parliament, Salomao Muchanga, promised that within the next three days he will announce the exact form of the demonstration.
Fonte: Allafrica
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