Has the CNE Allowed an Illegal Party to Stand?

Opinion

By Paul Faveut

Maputo — Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE) has been accused of allowing an illegal political party to run in the 28 October general elections, and of granting it campaign funds.
The party in question, the Party of Freedom and Democracy (PLD), did not exist until July, as its leader Caetano Sabile, interviewed by the latest edition of the weekly paper "Magazine Independente" (MI), freely admits.
He told the paper that the PLD submitted its candidature two weeks after the party had been recognised by the Ministry of Justice. But in the Mozambican legal order, government acts usually only take effect after they have been published in the official gazette, the "Boletim da Republica" (BR).
So far, the statutes of the PLD have not been published in the BR - again, as Sabile freely admitted. When interviewed by MI, Sabile could not even show the reporter a copy of his party's statutes, or the Ministry of Justice certificate granting recognition.
Sabile told MI that he was leaving for Namaacha, on the border with Swaziland, and that the PLD general secretary could provide the documents. But when MI went to speak to the general secretary at the party office, he did not have the documents. He phoned Sabile, and then informed the reporters that Sabile had locked the documents in an office elsewhere in the city.
Sabile had thus sent MI on a wild goose chase, and the paper was unable to look at the statutes and the certificate, or even confirm that they existed.
Nonetheless the CNE cleared the PLD's parliamentary lists to stand in 10 of the 13 constituencies. It is not, however, standing in the second largest constituency, Zambezia. When asked about this, Sabile gave two contradictory replies. First, he said the PLD was not standing in Zambezia "by political orientation", but then changed his mind and complained that the CNE had not notified the PLD of irregularities that should have been corrected in its Zambezia list.
Sabile claimed that by the time the PLD registered with the Justice Minister, it already had 3,000 members, and it was not too difficult to arrange from among them 400 people to stand as full or reserve candidates for the parliamentary elections.
This is possible, since Sabile is a demobilized soldier of the former government army, the FAM/FPLM, and a member of the main association of demobilized soldiers, AMODEG. It is reasonable to assume that the PLD has recruited via the AMODEG network. The documents required to stand as a parliamentary candidate are minimal - copies of one's identity card and voter's card, a criminal record certificate, and letters accepting nomination and declaring that the candidate is not covered by any incompatibilities.
So there is nothing necessarily suspicious about a group of demobilized soldiers being well organised enough to produce these documents. Nonetheless, for the sake of its own reputation, the CNE would be well advised to show the PLD documents to journalists.
It has not done so, merely referring MI to its decision of 14 May on the general requirements for parties wishing to stand in the elections. That was quite useless. An MI editorial remarked "What we want to see is evidence that the case of the PLD was presented regularly to the CNE, so that we can assess the legality of this party, since we have strong suspicions that the CNE has registered, and given public money, to an illegal party".
While the PLD candidates may have their papers in order, the same cannot be said of the party symbol, which will appear on the ballot paper. The symbol is a turkey, which seems obviously intended to confuse illiterate members of the electorate, since two other parties are using birds as symbols.
The party most likely to be damaged is the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) which uses for its symbol a crowing rooster against the sunrise. The PLD's turkey, like the MDM's rooster is at the centre of the party symbol.
The main opposition party, Renamo, uses the head of a partridge. But this is offset from the centre, the symbol also contains a distinctive series of arrows, and it is already well known. So perhaps Renamo will not suffer much from this.
Why a turkey? The PLD claims that the bird symbolizes "Mozambican pride", since the turkey is "traditionally regarded as a proud bird".
That must be a very recent tradition. Turkeys are native to north and central America, not to Africa. Doubtless some enterprising Mozambican farmers breed turkeys, but the only turkeys most Mozambicans are likely to see are frozen ones, imported for Xmas.
The CNE has granted 1.55 million meticais (about 56,800 US dollars) in campaign funds to the PLD. There is not much sign that the PLD is able to use this money. Although Sabile told MI that the PLD campaign has so far reached "a third of the electorate", in reality there is no campaign. No PLD posters or leaflets are visible in the streets, and the PLD has not yet produced the political party broadcasts to which it is entitled.
When MI visited the PLD headquarters, it did not find the bustle and excitement one might expect from a political party in the middle of an election campaign. There were no sign of election programmes, nobody was typing away on computers, and all the reporters could see were a few people calmly holding little flags displaying the turkey symbol.
The PLD seems to have no policies. Sabile told MI that the party has no programme for how it would govern the country. In other words, nobody knows what the PLD stands for, and it lacks all the usual attributes of a political party.

Source: Allafrica