Mozambique: Renamo says it’s in parliament to curb “Frelimo dictatorship”

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Mozambique: Renamo says it’s in parliament to curb “Frelimo dictatorship”

1:06 CAT | 27 Jan 2020

Viana Magalhães. [File photo: Sala da Paz]

The Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the main opposition party, says it will occupy its parliamentary seats despite “electoral fraud”, in order to curb “the dictatorship” of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), investing in politics rather than weapons.

In last October’s general elections, which Renamo considers fraudulent, Renamo saw its parliamentary bench lose 29 of the 89 deputies it had in the 2015-2020 legislature,

In the first interview after the inauguration of the members of parliament, the new chief whip of Renamo’s bench in the Assembly of the Republic, Viana Magalhaes, told Lusa that the party had decided to enter parliament to curb what he says is the dictatorial tendency of Frelimo, a party that won 184 of the total 250 seats in parliament.

“When we took our seats, we did it with the belief that this is the way to curb this dictatorship, which has a forced majority,” Magalhaes declared.

Had Renamo not occupied its seats in parliament, in protest against “stealing” of the elections, Frelimo would have free transit to perpetuate “the abuses” in the country’s governance.

Asked how his own bench could influence the positions of a bench enjoying an absolute majority, Magalhaes said that “Renamo will be an active voice of denunciation”, inside and outside the country, of “Frelimo tyranny”.

Over the next five years, the main opposition party in parliament would endeavour to depoliticise [despartidarizar} the state, which it claims has been “captured by Frelimo”.

“We see that there is a pressing need for us, as parliament, on the one hand, and as civil society, as a whole, to strive to make non-partisanship of the state a reality in Mozambique,” Magalhaes said.

Regarding the ambiguity within the party about the return to war, as a form of pressure in the face of the alleged fraud, Viana Magalhaes emphasised that Renamo is committed to respecting the Peace and National Reconciliation Agreement signed on August 6 in Maputo.

“In defending the non-return to war, we are following what was the legacy of our late president [Afonso Dhlakama], he is the one who, unilaterally, decreed the truce,” said Magalhaes.

Renamo, he continued, would choose dialogue to resolve political disputes, because, he said, Frelimo uses war to justify the failure of its governance.

Magalhaes followed party leadership in describing the members of the Renamo Military Junta, a splinter group within the party’s armed wing, as “deserters”.

“The party has already come out and distanced itself from the Military Junta. We consider them deserters,” he said of the group that is suspected of being the author of the armed attacks on roads and villages in the centre of the country which have caused 21 deaths since August.

In addition to Frelimo, with 184 seats, and Renamo, with 60, the Mozambican parliament has six Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) deputies, compared to the 17 it had in the last legislature.

Source: Lusa