Proposals for New CNE Disappoint By Paul Fauvet

Proposals for amended electoral laws drafted by all three of Mozambique's parliamentary groups insist that political parties should retain a major role on the National Elections Commission (CNE), thus flying in the face of recommendations from civil society bodies that the CNE should be completely depoliticized.

When the parliamentary groups deposited their proposals last week, the spokesperson for the ruling Frelimo Party, Nyeleti Mondlane, said that Frelimo wants a non-partisan CNE, and is open to reducing the number of CNE members.

However, the Frelimo document submitted retains exactly the same structure as the CNE that ran the 2009 general elections - five members appointed by the political parties represented in the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, and eight appointed by civil society bodies.

The five political appointees are chosen in proportion to the number of seats each party holds in the Assembly. For the last CNE, that resulted in three members appointed by Frelimo and two by the main opposition party, Renamo.

In the 2009 elections, Frelimo greatly increased its parliamentary majority. There are now 191 Frelimo deputies, 51 from Renamo and eight from the Mozambique Democratic Movement. The arithmetic involved in dividing five in that proportion would give Frelimo four members of the CNE, Renamo one, and the MDM none.

When it comes to the eight civil society members, Frelimo proposed that an

Assembly ad-hoc commission organise the submission of names.

Lists from civil society bodies must contain between 12 and 16 names - this is unlike the previous procedures where organisations could put forward just one name (which enabled organisation that were dormant to submit the name of their leader).

The ad-hoc commission would submit all the names to the Assembly chairperson, Veronica Macamo, who would then put them to the Assembly plenary to choose eleven of them - eight full members of the CNE and three supplementary members. In other words, the Frelimo majority in the Assembly would determine who from among the civil society nominees is appointed to the CNE.

This could, in theory, be avoided, if Mozambican civil society were disciplined enough to submit just one list with 12 names.

During the appointment of the last CNE, the most representative civil society body, the Electoral Observatory (consisting of the three main religious groupings, Catholic, Protestant and Islamic, and credible NGOs such as the Human Rights League), attempted to do just this - but failed, since many organisations, including the trade unions, refused to take part in the Observatory's highly transparent and democratic selection procedures. The result was that the five political party representatives selected who they wanted from the civil society nominees, producing a CNE widely regarding as lacking in credibility.

The Frelimo proposal also keeps the current structure of provincial, district and city elections commissions. Each of these bodies (and there are more than 150 of them) will have 11 members, five from the parliamentary parties (four chosen by Frelimo and one by Renamo) and six from civil society.

Candidates for the civil society seats on the provincial commissions will be presented to the CNE, and on the district and city commissions to the provincial commissions.

There have been civil society calls to abolish these lower level commissions, and a few years ago Frelimo itself thought they were superfluous. For they do nothing which cannot be done more efficiently by the local branches of the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the civil service.

All members of the commissions will receive a monthly allowance from the state budget. Since there are almost 2,000 of them, and all the commission will be operating for more than a year, this will be a very substantial sum.

The Frelimo proposal, however, looks calm and rational compared with those from the MDM and Renamo which call for the majority of seats on the CNE to go to political parties.

The MDM's proposal has the virtue of calling for a small CNE, of just seven members. But four of these would be appointed by political parties - one by Frelimo, one by Renamo, one by the MDM, and one by the extra-parliamentary parties. The other three members would come from civil society. The proposal does not make clear precisely how the civil society members would be appointed.

The MDM proposes provincial, district and city commissions formed in exactly the same way - seven members, four from political parties and three from civil society.

The Renamo proposal simply ignores all calls from observer missions, from civil society, and from the Constitutional Council (the body with the final say in electoral disputes), for a smaller, more professional and less political CNE. Instead Renamo wants a CNE of 21 members - five appointed by Frelimo, five by Renamo, five by the MDM, three by the extra-parliamentary parties and three by civil society. This proposal is blatantly designed to give opposition parties a majority on the CNE.

Neither Renamo nor the MDM explain why a party with just eight seats in parliament (the MDM) should be entitled to exactly the same representation on the CNE as parties with 51 and 191 seats.

Nor do they say why the extra-parliamentary parties, who have few members and fewer votes, no publications and not even a website between them, and most of whom go into hibernation between elections, should be entitled to any representation on the CNE at all.

Renamo even proposes that all extra-parliamentary parties (and over 50 minor parties are registered with the Ministry of Justice) should have a seat on the CNE, with the right to speak at CNE meetings, but without voting rights.

Renamo proposes provincial, district and city election commissions formed on the same model, albeit rather smaller - they would have 13 members, three each from Frelimo, Renamo and the MDM, two from the extra-parliamentary parties and two from civil society.

Renamo also demands the total politicisation of STAE, so that the professional civil servants dealing with the administrative side of elections would have political appointees looking over their shoulders at every stage.

There would be a professional general director of STAE - but he would be hamstrung by three deputy directors, one from Frelimo, one from Renamo and one from the MDM. The same system would be implemented all the way down the STAE structure at provincial, district and city level.

In addition the STAE staff would contain an unspecified, but clearly very large, number of appointees from the three parliamentary parties, the extra-parliamentary parties and civil society, all of them enjoying the right to allowances from the state budget. This structure would be unwieldy and very expensive.

The Frelimo, Renamo and MDM proposals are obviously incompatible and attempts to seek consensus look doomed to failure. The most likely outcome is that in late 2011 or early 2012 the Assembly, thanks to the Frelimo majority, will pass a modified version of the Frelimo proposal.

There is still time for Frelimo to change its mind about the composition of the CNE and remove political appointees altogether. After all, during the lengthy debates preceding the adoption in December 2006 of the current laws, Frelimo did at one point call for a CNE formed exclusively of civil society nominees - a proposal that horrified Renamo.

Frelimo would be true to its stated desire for a non-partisan CNE, if it returned to that 2006 proposal, and devised a mechanism whereby such a CNE could be formed without political interference.

Source: allafrica - 2010.10.12