Mozambique: Nyusi urges Assembly to pass Constitutional amendments

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Mozambique: Nyusi urges Assembly to pass Constitutional amendments

2:31 CAT | 02 May 2018

File photo / TVM

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi warned on Sunday that new demands raised by some deputies of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, are holding up the package of constitutional amendments on decentralisation.

Speaking in the town of Manhica, about 80 kilometres north of Maputo, Nyusi said he has been urging the Assembly to take the matter seriously.

The basic principles of decentralisation were agreed in negotiations between Nyusi and the leader of the Renamo rebel movement, Afonso Dhlakama, and Nyusi announced them publicly in early February.

“I have been asking the Assembly of the Republic to take seriously this document that was the result of consensus”, said Nyusi. “We now feel that our fellow countrymen in the Assembly – I don’t know if it’s all of them – are demanding new and difficult things which will hold up the process”.

He did not elaborate, but he was clearly referring to a new demand raised by Renamo concerning district administrators.

The Nyusi-Dhlakama consensual document envisages the first elections of district administrators in 2024, but says nothing about how district administrators will be appointed prior to that date. It was thus assumed that the current system, whereby the Ministry of State Administration appoints the administrators, would continue until 2024.

Renamo, however, is demanding that the provincial governors elected in 2019 should appoint the district administrators. Renamo candidates for governor can expect to win in at least three provinces (Sofala, Zambezia and Tete), and Renamo wants these governors to appoint the administrators in dozens of districts.

Nyusi stressed the urgency of approving the decentralisation package as a step towards a lasting peace. He added that among the many Mozambicans who want to see an effective peace “are our brothers from Renamo, who are in the bush. We need to cherish them, to see if they will leave the bush”.

He did not believe that many people wanted the remaining Renamo fighters to stay in the bush indefinitely. “We need to make headway with the documents resulting from our consensus”, Nyusi declared.

The Assembly is now running out of time. The longer the delay, the less likely it is that the constitutional amendments and legislation flowing from them will be passed in time for the municipal elections scheduled for 10 October. In that case, those elections would have to be held under the existing electoral law.

The main difference is that the draft amendments abolish the direct election of mayors. Instead the municipal electorate will only elect a municipal assembly, and whoever is the head of the list of candidates of the party that wins a majority will become mayor.

Nyusi also promised that the government would work to ensure that this year’s Mozambican football championship, “Mocambola 2018”, will not be interrupted.

Earlier this month, the Mozambican Football League (LMF) suddenly announced that it was suspending the championship because no more money was available to pay for plane tickets. Given the size of the country, only air transport would allow teams from the northern and southern Mozambique to play each other.

The LMF claimed that its budget had been disrupted by the demand from Mozambique Airlines (LAM) for a fuel surcharge (which is normal practice in many airlines). LAM, in serious financial difficulties of its own, had no intention of carrying football clubs unless they paid the full price of their tickets.

LAM warned that it would no longer carry football teams unless they paid immediately for their tickets. LMF then announced, in a blaze of publicity, that it was suspending the championship “until the outcome of negotiations under way with our partners”.

The thrust of the LMF statement was to blame LAM for its misfortunes, rather than its own mismanagement and inability to raise enough funds to cover the costs of the championship.

Nyusi promised to mobilise support for Mocambola. “Mocambola is not an activity of one person, it’s an activity which belongs to the Mozambican people”, said the President. “I want to be part of the solution. Since it belongs to the people, and since we don’t want to interrupt the aspirations of the people, we are going to help this edition of Mocambola reach its end”.

“It would be a scandal to begin a national activity and not to finish it”, he stressed. “In this case, the guilty parties would be those people who thought they could finish it”.

The government would therefore “mobilise the necessary support and resources” for continuing the championship but Nyusi added that the managers of sporting bodies must be more rigorous in future, and look for the best way of organising championships that does not frustrate expectations.

Source: AIM