Frelimo’s presidential candidate: Political Commission to propose list of names, Central Committee will choose – Mozambique Elections

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Frelimo’s presidential candidate: Political Commission to propose list of names, Central Committee will choose – Mozambique Elections

4:06 CAT | 15 Feb 2024

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: O País]

The Political Commission of Frelimo, the party in power in Mozambique, will propose to the organisation’s Central Committee (CC) a set of names from which to choose the candidate for the October presidential elections, a party spokesperson has said.

“It is the Central Committee ” that will elect the candidate of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) for the presidential elections on October 9, Ludmila Maguni said in an interview with Lusa.

The current party leader and head of state, Filipe Nyusi, can no longer run for a new term, as stipulated in the Constitution.

“The final candidate will be chosen at the Central Committee level, the Political Committee, as it did in the past, endorsing the names,” Maguni said.

Regarding the dates on which the ruling party’s future candidate for Ponta Vermelha, the official residence of the Mozambican head of state, will be known, Maguni said that it was up to the Political Commission to schedule and announce the next session of the CC.

“It would be quite difficult, at this moment, to say what this process will be, but I think that the Political Commission itself, after meeting, will be able to say what the path forward will be,” she stressed.

Regarding the debate on whether Frelimo’s next candidate should be from the centre of the country, since the party has already had leaders from the south and north of Mozambique, Maguni stressed that geographic origin had no bearing on the choice.
“The most important thing is not where the candidate comes from; the most important thing is to have the best candidate, that’s the criteria we’re going to use, to have a candidate who will respond to the country’s issues,” she explained.

“We are looking, within the 9.5 million members of Frelimo, for the best candidate,” Maguni reiterated.

The candidate that Frelimo will nominate for the next presidential elections, she continued, must be agreed among party members and be a person with the capacity to implement a development agenda and identify solutions to the challenges the country faces.

“We will ensure that we have a candidate who can respond and continue the work that President Filipe Jacinto Nyusi has already started. We think he will be a candidate who will provide continuity, but looking at the country as a whole,” she said.

Maguni added that if the next head of state and government continued to be elected by Frelimo, he or she should focus his or her action on the development of social and economic infrastructure and the “fight against terrorism” in the province of Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique.

The Frelimo spokesperson also highlighted that the current President of the Republic had led the country in difficult circumstances, such as natural calamities, Covid-19 and terrorist attacks in Cabo Delgado, but had achieved gains in terms of infrastructure in health, education, justice, energy and water supply.

She said that the internal election of the future presidential candidate would be participatory, democratic and responsible, taking into account the importance of the party in the life of the country.

Maguni said she considered public criticism by important party members of Filipe Nyusi’s governance and the controversial way in which the party won the municipal elections on October 11th to be normal, arguing that differences of opinion within the organisation are accentuated in a period of leadership transition.

“Always, when we are on the brink of an [internal] electoral process, especially when it involves change, we usually have these issues, in which different voices are raised,” she explained.

Mozambique will hold its seventh presidential and legislative elections, its second for provincial governors and its fourth for provincial assemblies, on October 9.

Candidates for the post of President of the Republic must be submitted to the Constitutional Council by June 10th.

Source: Lusa