Mozambique: Minister promises to ascertain “inhuman conditions” after students’ detention
File photo / The head of the government's delegation in the joint Commission, Jacinto Veloso
The full Joint Commission between the Mozambican government and the Renamo rebels met in Maputo on Monday morning to discuss the latest proposals on decentralization made by the international mediating team.
At the end of the fourth round of talks in late October, the mediators left a proposal on decentralization with the two sides, centred on the question of provincial governance. Renamo has been demanding the right to rule six central and northern provinces where it claims to have won the 2014 general elections.
When the fifth round of talks began, in the second week of November, the mediators collected the response to their proposals from both sides, and then redrafted it, in an attempt to reach a consensus.
The mediators opted to work separately with the government and Renamo delegations, and so it was only on Monday that the Joint Commission met in plenary session. The meeting lasted for about three hours, and at the end nothing was made public. Neither the mediators nor either of the two delegations was willing to make any comment to the press.
The mediators had hoped that draft legislation on decentralisation could be sent to the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic in November. That deadline has been missed, and even if a consensual position is agreed, the likelihood of ramming it through the Assembly before the Christmas and New Year holidays seems minimal.
The Assembly’s agenda is crowded with matters that cannot be postponed, including the government’s economic and social plan for next year and the accompanying 2017 budget, President Filipe Nyusi’s State of the Nation Address, and the report from the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the loans taken out, with illicit government guarantees, by the quasi-public companies, Ematum, Proindicus and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management).
The last possible date for the current Assembly sitting to end is 22 December. It seems scarcely possible, in the next 17 days, to slot in a serious debate on complex decentralization legislation, and possible constitutional amendments.
The whole purpose behind setting up the Joint Commission was to pave the way for a face-to-face meeting between Nyusi and Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakam
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