Budget Monitoring Forum activist exposes intimidation and threats

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Budget Monitoring Forum activist exposes intimidation and threats

11:58 CAT | 17 Feb 2020

File photo: Lusa

The outgoing director of the Budget Monitoring Forum (FMO), a consortium of civil organisations overseeing Mozambique’s public accounts, said she was the target of threats during her three years in office, to the point that she considered giving up her duties.

The FMO was among the entities campaigning against the state negotiating the repayment of the ‘hidden debts’ contracted illegally by the government of former president Armando Guebuza between 2013 and 2014.

The FMO leadership “had repeatedly experienced intimidation, defamation and counter-narratives, putting human rights defenders at risk,” Denise Namburete said in a speech to which Lusa had access on Friday.

She said that, had she not believed strongly “in the legitimacy of the right to citizenship, she would probably have stepped down”.

Coming to the end of her term in office, Denise Namburete on Tuesday passed the baton to Adriano Nuvunga, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD).

She had experienced “different forms of coercion, intimidation and restriction of the freedoms of expression and of thought potentially critical to the narratives established by the government,” she said.

The FMO has existed for eight years as an entity focused on monitoring public finance management, specifically in the country’s budget cycle, in defence of principles of good governance, transparency and accountability in the management of public funds.

Source: Lusa