Nyusi's veto of the electoral law guarantees Frelimo's victory on October 9 At the last minute, on May 30, President Filipe Nyusi vetoed the revisions to the electoral law agreed by consensus by Parliament a month earlier.

The veto guarantees Frelimo's victory in the October 9 elections, despite it being an apparently minor technical point.

The electoral law gives the National Electoral Commission (CNE) and the Constitutional Council (CC) the right to order vote recounts. The law passed on April 30 was a compromise, saying that only the CC and CNE can order reruns, but the district courts could order recounts, which Nyusi did not accept.

The change would have prevented Frelimo from repeating last year's theft in the Maputo and Matola municipal elections. It seems likely that Frelimo in Parliament (AR, Assembly of the Republic) simply didn't notice.

Renamo won the municipal elections in Maputo and Matola by a wide margin. Renamo was able to prove this by showing this bulletin its copies of more than 1600 polling station notices.

The district electoral commissions gave the victory to Frelimo. Renamo appealed in one district of Maputo, Mbukwana, where the court accepted that the notices submitted by the District Electoral Commission (CDE) were false and written after the elections.

(The detailed judgment of October 20, 2023 was published in Canal de Moçambique on October 25, 2023).

Despite Renamo having proof of victory and the district court agreeing with the evidence of forgery, the CC rejected the appeals and gave the victory to Frelimo.

The change in the law would have given the district courts the right to order recounts in this situation, which was too dangerous for Frelimo. Meanwhile, the CC argued that the Constitution gives it total control of the elections and vehemently stated that it would not relinquish this power. This reading of the Constitution is contested by both the Supreme Court and the Bar Association.

President Nyusi was apparently anxious to maintain a complacent and all-powerful CC, which would guarantee a landslide victory on October 9. Both the CC and the CNE act in total secrecy, without any justification or explanation for their decisions.

The district recounts would have opened a window, which cannot be allowed. The Constitution (article 162) gives the President 30 days to enact or veto legislation. Nyusi waited until the last day to issue his veto, when Parliament was no longer in session. This makes it impossible to challenge in the short term and creates a series of timing problems that the revision of the law also tried to solve.

There may be a special session of Parliament, but with no changes to the timetable or recounts to resolve, there are few questions left.