Patrícia Jerónimo at the Central Registry Office. They must indicate the applicant’s full name, date of birth, civil status, filiation, citizenship, place of birth, place of current residence and activity developed in Mozambique, and be accompanied by the applicant’s birth registration certificate, proof of domicile in Mozambique, and criminal record or similar document [Article 14 (1) and (2) of the Nationality Regulation, with the necessary adaptations]. The Central Registry Office organises the documentation received and sends the file to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an opinion on the merits of the application. The opinion is to be issued within a six-month deadline, following which the file is sent to the Minister of Interior who, on delegation from the Council of Ministers, decides on the application after reviewing it and checking whether or not the reacquisition requirements are met [Article 14 (4) of the Nationality Regulation]. Once the reacquisition is granted and the reacquisition decree is published in the official journal, the Central Registry Office registers it ex officio, although the interested party is also entitled to request the registration by presenting a copy of the official journal in which the reacquisition decree was published (Article 15 of the Nationality Regulation). As noted a propos the naturalisation procedure, the reacquisition notices published in the official journal do not include any justification for the decision to grant Mozambican citizenship besides a vague (and mistaken) reference to the legal provisions applied. If Ministerial Decrees no. 42/2008 and 43/2008, of 7 May 2008,89 are any indication, Mozambican authorities are mistakenly invoking Article 16 of Law no. 16/87 (when they should be invoking Article 16 of the 1975 Nationality Act as amended by Law no. 16/87), refer to Article 14 of the Nationality Regulation without adding a reference to Article 20 (1) of the Regulation (by force of which Article 14 applies also to cases of reacquisition), and make no mention to Article 32 (1) of the Constitution, the provision that trumps all others. According to Article 32 (3) of the Constitution, the reacquisition of Mozambican citizenship returns the interested party to the legal status held before the loss, so those who were citizens by birth will reacquire their status as citizens by birth, with all the perks attached. Article 16 (2) of the 1975 Nationality, which set as a general rule that reacquisition would only entitle its beneficiaries to ‘citizenship by acquisition’ status, has long been inapplicable, since it was implicitly repealed when the 1990 Constitution came into force. 3.4. Rights of citizens by birth and by acquisition The 2004 Constitution widened the gap between citizens by birth and citizens by acquisition and their respective rights. According to Article 30 (1), citizens by acquisition are explicitly denied access to the diplomatic and military careers, as before,90 but are also explicitly deemed ineligible as members of parliament, cabinet members and office holders in one of the sovereign powers (i.e. President of the Republic, National Assembly, Government, judicial courts and Constitutional Council, per Article 133 of the Constitution).91 As was the 89 Both granted Mozambican citizenship by reacquisition. The edition of the official journal in which the notices were published is available at https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Mercenaries/WG/Law/Mozambique1.pdf [17.04.2019]. 90 Article 29 (1) of the 1990 Constitution explicitly denied citizens by acquisition access to the diplomatic and military careers while opening the scope of the exclusion by adding the phrasing ‘or equivalent’. 91 This list is extensive and arguably at odds with the universality and equality principle enshrined in Article 35 of the 2004 Constitution, but there were calls for it to be even larger. That was the case with Portuguese constitutional lawyer Jorge Bacelar Gouveia (2004: 123), who argued that the list of offices out of reach for naturalised citizens should also include the police and the intelligence services. 36 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2019/6 - © 2019 Author