by Bayano Valy – SANF 04 no 105
Judging from the just-ended electoral campaign, the 1-2 December Mozambican poll result is anything but a foregone conclusion.
One certainty though is that Mozambicans have the task of electing a successor to President Joaquim Chissano who is not running for a further mandate.
President Chissano is standing down after 18 years at the helm of Mozambique’s politics – he was appointed to the presidential post after the death of the country’s first president, Samora Machel, in a plane crash at the hillsides of Mbuzini in South Africa, in October 1986.
Chissano was subsequently elected Mozambique’s president in 1994 in the first democratic poll after having signed two years earlier the Rome peace accord, which put to an end a 16-year war of destabilisation waged by then rebel movement Renamo.
In 1999, he won a further five-year mandate, and so did the ruling Frelimo party clinching 33 seats in the 250-seat Assembly of the Republic, the country’s parliament. Renamo held the remaining 117 seats.
Chissano’s successor is likely to be Frelimo’s current secretary-general, Armando Guebuza, or the opposition Renamo leader, Afonso Dhlakama.
Guebuza held the posts of Frelimo’s political commissioner, and transport minister in the late 1970s throughout the 1980s.
If between the two candidates and parties things seem to be to close to call, another interesting battle is expected between the leader of the newly-established Party for Peace, Development and Democracy (PDD), Raul Domingos, and Ya-Qub Sibindy, leader of PIMO (Mozambique’s Independent Party).
In 1999, Sibindy came third, although a very distant one at that. Domingos, since being expelled from Renamo, where he was number two, in 2000, has since gained a foothold and seems to be a force to be reckoned with. PDD ran a good campaign and there are suggestions that he might take some votes from Renamo, especially in the central province of Sofala, the latter’s stronghold.
Domingos co-negotiated the Rome agreement with Guebuza.
Meanwhile, another certainty is that Mozambicans living abroad will vote for the first time. Voting will take place in Germany, Kenya, Malawi, Portugal, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The diaspora constituencies will be entitled to two seats in the 250-seat parliament. The tug-of-war between the country’s Electoral Commission (CNE) and international observers seems settled.
The foreign observers, namely the European Union Observer Mission and the Carter Centre, have been pushing to have full access to all stages of the vote tabulation.
This was a position subscribed to although belatedly by the Election Observatory, a coalition of seven Mozambican civil society organisations, led by the CNE’s first chairman and Vice-Chancellor of UEM, Brazão Mazula, which joined its voice to the chorus of those wanting full access to vote tabulation.
However, the CNE has so far refused on the grounds that the law does not allow for it. But the law is silent on the issue – so the CNE takes the view that what is not envisaged by law is forbidden.
The only guarantee the CNE gave so far has been to instruct STAE (Technical Secretariat for State Administration), its executive arm, to set up technical conditions for observers and journalists to follow the vote tabulation process through a window, and have access to six machines linked to the nerve computers.
Nevertheless, the former US president, Jimmy Carter, who is in Mozambique, said after holding talks with President Chissano, that the country is an example of peace and democracy consolidation in Africa.
“We’re proud with the progress this great nation has achieved, not only in socio-economic area but also in the political sphere,” said Carter, who heads the observer mission bearing his name.
Over 400 observers from the various missions, including 100 from various observer teams from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), have been accredited and deployed throughout the country.
The European Union observer mission is the largest with 130 observers, the Carter Centre with 60, and Commonwealth with 10. Other observers come from the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP), among others.
STAE says that everything is in place for the elections. And all 12,800 polling stations in the country, and the 50 abroad have been set up and tested.
Both Frelimo and Renamo fielded many women in the lists, an indication that Mozambique could once more go over the 30 percent SADC target for women in parliament.
The target was laid out in the 1997 SADC Declaration on Gender and Development, which stipulates that women should occupy 30 percent of decision-making posts in government by 2005.
Mozambique has a tradition of electing women into high office, including the current prime minister, Luisa Diogo. (SARDC)
