About a third of Mozambican voters should vote on 11 October this year, to choose their local leaders. While the elections are an opportunity to deepen democracy, in one of the most corrupt countries in the world and ruled by an authoritarian regime, holding elections is frequently used as a mechanism for the political leaders to appropriate resources of the State for private purposes, to increase the repression of fundamental freedoms, to manipulate the way democratic
institutions, and to present electoralist government programmes which will never be implemented.
Major corruption scandals in Mozambique are linked to illicit political financing – specifically, of election campaigns of the ruling party. In election periods, political power tends to increase control and limit the work of state institutions, the mass media and civil society. The present document presents the 10 areas of governance most relevant for monitoring in 2023, the year which opens the election cycle in Mozambique.
