Renamo even boycotts ‘Happy Birthday’ – AIM report

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Renamo even boycotts ‘Happy Birthday’ – AIM report

8:05 CAT | 03 Nov 2016

File photo / Verónica Macamo, Chairperson of Parliament

Veronica Macamo, the chairperson of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, celebrates her 59th birthday this month, and, as Tuesday’s session of the Assembly opened, the deputies greeted her with a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday”.

Or at least some of them did. The deputies from the ruling Frelimo Party and from the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) sang vigorously, and gave Macamo a standing ovation, while the deputies from the Renamo rebels remained seated and stubbornly silent.

The head of the MDM parliamentary group, Lutero Simango, gave an enormous bunch of flowers to Macamo. Explaining his gesture, Simango told the Assembly “I did it for all those who clamour for peace and tranquillity”. His words were warmly applauded by his own colleagues, and by the Frelimo benches, while sepulchral silence continued to envelop the Renamo deputies.

Simango warned against the consequences of unbounded political ambition. “If we carry on like this, one day everyone will want to govern his own locality or neighbourhood”, he said. “If we reach that point, then we won’t have a state and we’ll be worse than Somalia”. Again he was met by applause from Frelimo and the MDM, and silence from Renamo.

The head of the Renamo parliamentary group, Ivone Soares, felt obliged to explain Renamo’s churlish behaviour. “We salute your birthday and we wish you long life”, she told Macamo. “But a few days ago the head of the Renamo group in the Sofala Provincial Assembly was assassinated. So we are in mourning and we don’t feel like singing”. Then she embraced Macamo.

It is indeed true that Juma Ramos, head of the Renamo group in the Sofala Assembly, was gunned down in Beira on Sunday night. But Renamo does not have a monopoly on mourning murdered colleagues. On Saturday night two local Frelimo officials in Mutua, 50 kilometres west of Beira, Arao Chiguemane and Antonio Macurreia, were executed by members of Renamo’s illicit militia – an incident that Ivone Soares did not see fit to mention.

Source: AIM