Local elections in Mozambique in 2008
The 2008 local elections in Mozambique were held on November 19, 2008 in the 43 cities ("municipios") of Mozambique . The mayors and the members of the city assemblies were elected in separate voting procedures. It was the third local election since Mozambique gained independence. The turnout was 46 percent, a good double that of the previous local elections in 2003 . Compared to the previous elections, ten additional locations could be voted on. However, there were still no local elections in rural areas.
The elections ended with a triumph for the ruling FRELIMO party , which won 42 of 43 mayor positions, a disaster for the country's largest opposition party, RENAMO , and a triumph for the independent candidate in the city of Beira , Daviz Simango .
Parties entered
Only FRELIMO and RENAMO ran for election in all cities. Partido para a Paz, Democracia e Desenvolvimento (PDD) was the only one of the smaller parties in almost half (21) of the cities on the ballot papers, PIMO in 13 cities. The other groups were limited to one or a few places. In addition to the two major parties, the following took place in one or more places:
- AND - Aliança Nacional Democrática
- CEV - Coligação Ecologista Verdes
- GDB - Grupo para a Democracia da Beira
- GMM - Grupo para Mudança de Marromeu
- GRM - Grupo de Reflexão e Mudança
- JPC - Associação Juntos pela Cidade
- MONAMO / PMSD - Partido Moçambicano da Social Democracia
- NATURMA - Grupo de cidadãos Eleitores,
- Naturais e Residentes da Vila da Manhiça
- OCINA - Organização dos candidatos independentes de Nacala
- PDD - Partido para a Paz, Democracia e Desenvolvimento
- PIMO - Partido Independente de Moçambique
- PT - Partido Trabalhista
- UM - Partido de União para Mudança
- UNAMO - União Nacional Moçambicana
Results
In 33 out of 43 city assemblies, FRELIMO now has a two-thirds majority of the seats, while RENAMO has no seat in nine cities and only one seat in eight towns. This result is also due to the fact that the party leadership of the very centralized RENAMO leadership did not support the local election campaigns.
The two small parties with a certain national presence, PDD and PIMO, suffered severe defeats and are now only represented with one seat in the city of Beira , instead of one seat in two (PDD) or three, as in the previous election (PIMO) city meetings. Both received only one percent of the votes cast in the majority of the places in which they competed. The UNAMO party, which only appeared in Milange and Matola (0.3%), won 12.4 of the votes and thus a seat in the city assembly, its candidate for mayor even 23.4% of the votes. With this, UNAMO relegated RENAMO to third place in Melange. The JPC party is the only small party that has won seats in all three local elections so far in one city, namely in the capital Maputo . But JPC also dropped from 15 seats in 1999 to five in 2003 to two seats.
The election result in the third largest city in the country, Beira, was particularly bitter for RENAMO. Here RENAMO fell from more than 50% of all votes to a meaningless 2.7% for RENAMO's mayoral candidate and 37% for the election to the city assembly. The background to this was the decision by RENAMO boss Afonso Dhlakama not to nominate Beira's mayor, Daviz Simango , as RENAMO's candidate again. Obviously, he feared internal party competition from the popular mayor. Simango's supporters managed within a very short time to organize the legal requirements for Simango's candidacy against RENAMO. Daviz Simango was elected mayor with 76.1% of all votes - again significantly more than in 2003 - although FRELIMO also undertook a key election campaign in Beira to win back this important city. This makes Beira the only city in Mozambique that is not governed by a FRELIMO mayor. This event gained supraregional importance because Simango founded a national party with the Movimento Democrático de Moçambique party a few months after the local elections, which has developed into serious competition for RENAMO.
Democratic standards
Not only the almost doubled voter turnout can be seen as progress compared to the local elections of 2003 (and especially in 1998 ), but also the increase in the number of cities in which people were allowed to vote. The elections were also critically monitored by 1,124 national and 130 non-national election observers, and parallel election counts were carried out by independent bodies, which confirmed the results.
swell
- ↑ The Open University.uk: Mozambique Political Process Bulletin ( Memento of the original from June 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF 27 kB)
- ↑ a b EISA.org.za: Final results of 2008 local elections ( memento of the original from November 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , (PDF 115 kB)
- ↑ a b The Open University.uk: Mozambique political process bulletin ( Memento of the original from June 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , December 15, 2008 (PDF 150 kB)
- ↑ a b CIP / AWEPA: 2009 Elections, Mozambique political process bulletin ( Memento of the original from May 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , November 1, 2009 (PDF 60 kB)
