Good morning and welcome to yesterday's daily. Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE) says it will study the possibility of holding the country's municipal, provincial, legislative and presidential elections on the same day. The official argument is simple: elections are expensive, and combining them would reduce costs.
However, after the events of 2024, cost is unlikely to be the first concern of most Mozambicans.
The last general election triggered the country's deepest political crisis in decades. Domestic observers, international missions and opposition parties documented widespread irregularities, while months of protests left hundreds dead. Public confidence in the electoral system has yet to recover.
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Against that backdrop, any proposal to redesign Mozambique's electoral calendar should be judged against one overriding question: would it make elections more credible, or less?
Municipal elections have often proved more fertile ground for opposition parties than national polls. They also take place only in municipalities, not across the whole country. That gives smaller parties, civil society groups and observers a more realistic chance of monitoring the vote closely, deploying delegates and challenging irregularities.
