Seminar: Electoral Justice & Equity in Mozambique
Maputo, October 28, 2004
Two election processes - general and local - have been completed in the country and the seminar coincides with the beginning of a new electoral cycle: the Mozambique General Elections will be held this year. This seminar is an initiative of the Centre for Democracy and Development Studies (CEDE) in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and the EISA Field Office in Maputo, Mozambique.
It offers Mozambican civil society an opportunity to express its experiences, concerns and recommendations regarding elections in Mozambique, within the framework of electoral justice and equity. It will bring together representatives of civil society organizations, state institutions (particularly those with electoral management responsibilities), political parties, academics and the media.
Electoral Justice and Equity
These concepts are defined as the balance between the election results (including their social consequences) and the legitimate expectations and hopes of various participants in the process: political parties, the electorate, electoral management authorities and the international community.
Electoral justice and equity will be measured in terms of the values assumed by both national and international communities to govern elections in a liberal democracy, whether these values are entrenched in legal texts, or exist as part of another framework. They have to do with the function of elections in liberal democracies, the context of a society structured around democracy building and national development objectives.
Objectives
- To discuss issues that constitute challenges for Mozambique in its quest for ever more just and equitable elections
- to propose solutions for the chief constraints to this process that will assist in nurturing Mozambique's process of democratisation.
- to propose advocacy initiatives to encouraging state institutions and political parties to strengthen electoral justice and equity in the regulation, organisation and conduct of Mozambique's elections.
- to produce a document entitled Civil Society Recommendations for Electoral Justice and Equity in Mozambique, intended as a tool for advocacy initiatives arising from the seminar.
Methodology
Plenary discussion will focus on subject areas linked to the promotion of electoral justice and equity in Mozambique. There will be two to three themes in each chosen area that will be objects of discussion and proposed solutions and each discussion area will be facilitated by national and/or regional experts.