Mozambique: Renamo leader warns government to keep accord promises

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Mozambique: Renamo leader warns government to keep accord promises

9:18 CAT | 01 Sep 2023

Illustrative photo. Renamo leader in Chiure, Cabo Delgado. .[Credit: Ossufo Momade on Facebook ]

Ossufo Momade, the leader of Mozambique’s largest opposition party, Renamo, warned on Friday that for there to be peace, the President must “fulfil” the agreements and hold “free, fair and transparent” elections.

“Does the President of the Republic, his party [Frelimo], want peace? We have to comply with what we agreed on at the negotiating table”, said the leader of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), during a pre-campaign action for the sixth local elections, on October 11th, which he has been carrying out since Thursday in Cabo Delgado province.

“We don’t want to go back, because we want peace,” Momade insisted.

In recent days, the two largest Mozambican opposition parties, Renamo and the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), have accused the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo, in power) of preparing an “electoral fraud”, particularly in Maputo, but without specifics.

“We have made the appeal, in every meeting, everywhere we go, that we want free, fair and transparent elections. Whoever is elected must govern, we do not want dilatory maneuvers from Frelimo”, stated Ossufo Momade, also accusing the party in power to “use” the Police of the Republic of Mozambique.

“We are making this appeal: We do not want war, we have already waged war in the past and on August 6, 2019 we signed the Maputo agreement, we do not want to go back to war, although others want to push us towards war” , pointed.

The President of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, in August enacted the law for the amendment of the Constitution of the Republic, which postpones, without a new date, the holding of district elections – the administrators of the 154 districts will continue to be appointed directly by the Government -, which were scheduled for 2024, under the 2019 Peace and National Reconciliation Agreement.

The amendment was approved in parliament only with Frelimo’s votes in favour, on the grounds of “unaffordable” financial costs with this process.

More than 8.7 million Mozambican voters are registered to vote in the sixth local elections, below the initial projection of 9.8 million voters, according to data from the National Elections Commission.

Mozambican voters will choose 65 new mayors on October 11, including 12 new municipalities, joining the 53 already existing ones.

In the 2018 municipal elections, Frelimo won in 44 of the 53 municipalities and the opposition in only nine: Renamo, with eight, and MDM, with one.

This electoral cycle continues on October 9, 2024, with the simultaneous holding of presidential elections – in which Filipe Nyusi, who is serving his second and final constitutional term, can no longer run for office -, legislative elections for the Assembly of The Republic (parliament) , for the Provincial Assemblies and for Provincial Governor.

The Mozambican Government announced at the end of July that it had already received the database of former Renamo guerrillas, a necessary step for establishing pensions, under the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) process.

The DDR process, which began in 2018 and covers 5,221 former Renamo guerrillas, of which 257 were women, ended last June, with the closure of the Vunduzi base, the last Renamo base, located in the district of Gorongosa, central province of Sofala.

That base closed 30 years and eight months after the end of the Mozambican civil war and the ceremony represented the end of the demobilization process of the guerrillas who remained at the bases in remote areas and who began to hand over their weapons in 2019.

This is followed by the reintegration phase, which includes the beginning of payment of pensions to demobilized personnel.

The closure of the last base is part of the Peace and National Reconciliation Agreement signed between the Frelimo Government and Renamo in August 2019, the third signed between the parties, with the first two being violated and resulting in an armed confrontation, in following the contestation of the electoral results by the main opposition party.

Source: Lusa