Maputo Assembly expels six defectors from MDM – AIM report

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Maputo Assembly expels six defectors from MDM – AIM report

8:25 CAT | 10 Sep 2018

The Maputo Municipal Assembly on Wednesday sacked six of its members who had defected from the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) to other parties or groups.

The six are Ismael Nhacuecue (a former head of the MDM group in the Assembly), Armando Paia, Ismael Cassamo, Carlos Tembe, Wiliamo Savanguane and Rui Munona. All were elected on the MDM ticket in the municipal elections of 2013.

There are 64 seats in the Maputo Municipal Assembly. In 2013, the ruling Frelimo Party won 37 of them, and the MDM took the other 27. There are no members of the Assembly from the main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, because Renamo boycotted the 2013 elections.

At the Wednesday meeting, 56 members of the Assembly were present. 51 of them voted to expel the MDM defectors from the Assembly and five cast blank ballots. It can safely be assumed that the five blank ballots come from those under threat of expulsion, while the great majority of Frelimo and MDM members voted in favour of the move.

According to Augusto Banze, the head of the MDM group in the Assembly, Ismael Nhacucuè, Armando Augusto, Ismael Cassamo and Rui Munona, are all on Renamo’s list of candidates for the 10 October municipal elections. The other two, Carlos Tembe and Wiliamo Savanguane, have joined the list put forward by an independent group calling itself the “Group of Citizens for Mozambican Civic Solidarity”.

The Assembly moved against its former members under a clause in the legislation governing municipalities, which states that elected municipal officials lose their seats if they join a party or list other than that for which they were originally elected. The penalty for betraying one’s party is expulsion from the Assembly.

Banze told reporters “these members came into conflict with the law and because they enrolled in a different list, they lose their seats. They cannot hold office in any municipality, and they cannot be candidates in the next elections”.

The six expelled members claimed that the Assembly’s vote was “illegal and irresponsible”. Ismael Nhacuecue told reporters that they will appeal to the Administrative Tribunal.

“We are members of the Municipal Assembly elected for this term of office”, he said. “So we’re carrying on to the end. The end is to hear the ruling of the Administrative Tribunal”.

Nhacuecue denied that the four on the Renamo list were actually card-carrying Renamo members, but merely supporters of the Renamo mayoral candidate, Venancio Mondlane. This is irrelevant, since the law covers all those who appear on lists different from that on which they were originally elected, regardless of party membership.

This is the latest stage in a bitter battle between Renamo and the MDM. Renamo clearly set out to wreck the MDM’s electoral chances by poaching some of its most prominent members, such as Mondlane (once the rapporteur of the MDM parliamentary group), and the mayor of the central city of Quelimane, Manuel Araujo.

The MDM has responded by trying to disqualify its turncoats from standing in the October elections. Frelimo has been happy to support the MDM, leading to claims from Renamo and from the MDM defectors that there is a “Frelimo-MDM coalition”.

The MDM has clearly read the municipal legislation more closely than Renamo did. It successfully asked the National Elections Commission (CNE) to disqualify Mondlane, and Renamo’s subsequent appeal to the Constitutional Council, the highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law was rejected.

In Quelimane, Araujo was sacked as mayor – but, like the six members of the Maputo Assembly, he is appealing to the Administrative Tribunal.

In Maputo, Renamo has already lost its mayoral candidate. Unless the Administrative Tribunal overturns the Assembly’s decision, it will now lose four other candidates.

Source: AIM