Mozambique: Renamo denies claims made by Renamo mayor – AIM

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: Renamo denies claims made by Renamo mayor – AIM

2:56 CAT | 09 May 2022

File photo: Manuel de Araujo, Quelimane mayor., [File photo: DW]

Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, has denied a claim made by one of its own senior members, Manuel de Araujo, mayor of the central city of Quelimane, that Renamo obliges mayors elected on the Renamo ticket to steal money from the municipal coffers and deliver it to the party.

The Renamo official spokesperson, Jose Manteigas, at a Monday press conference in Maputo accused Araujo of lying.

Mozambican Television (TVM) had on Friday broadcast an interview with Araujo in which he claimed that a member of the Renamo Political Commission has obliged mayors to divert funds from the municipalities to the party.

Manteigas retorted “It is not, and never has been, the practice or culture of Renamo to abuse its position, much less to instruct or oblige or in way force members of the party to commit illicit acts”. That would be “completely opposed to our ideology and philosophy of governance”.

Renamo, he claimed, favoured “zero tolerance” of corruption.

Araujo had also said there is no democracy inside Renamo, which Manteigas denounced as “a lie intended deliberately to stain and slander Renamo and its members. He accused Araujo of attempting to divide Renamo.

ALSO READ: Renamo after Dhlakama: Cohesion or splits?

Araujo was elected to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, in the 2004 elections, on the Renamo list. But he then deserted Renamo and joined the newly formed Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) in order to run as the MDM candidate in the mayoral by-election in Quelimane in 2011. He won that election, and two years later, in 2013, he was the MDM candidate for mayor of Quelimane in nationwide municipal elections.

The MDM wanted to run him again at the next local elections, in 2018, but Araujo abandoned the party on whose back he had prospered, and rejoined Renamo. He was head of the Renamo list for Quelimane in the 2018 elections, and again he won. He has thus been mayor of Quelimane for over a decade, but representing two different parties.

Manteigas said Araujo had benefitted from Renamo’s internal democratic procedure. He passed through an internal election to become the Renamo candidate for mayor in 2018, and at the Renamo congress held in January 2019, he was elected to the party’s national council. Later that year he competed against three other Renamo members in an internal election to determine who would be the Renamo candidate for provincial governor of Zambezia. Again Araujo won the internal election, but in the election of the provincial governor, he was defeated by the ruling Frelimo Party.

Manteigas said that Araujo’s own trajectory proved that there is genuine democracy in Renamo. He urged Araujo “to concentrate on solving the problems of the Quelimane municipality”, and not to run to the mass media to express his disagreements with the rest of the party leadership.

Manteigas did not suggest that Renamo might take any disciplinary measures against Araujo, but this clash must reduce Araujo’s chances of being the Renamo candidate for Mayor of Quelimane in the municipal elections scheduled for 2023.

Source: AIM