Frelimo at risk of losing next elections – Sérgio Vieira

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Frelimo at risk of losing next elections – Sérgio Vieira

8:13 CAT | 16 Jun 2016

STV / Sergio Vieira

One of the leading intellectuals in Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo Party, former security minister Sergio Vieira, has warned that Frelimo is at risk of losing the next elections (municipal elections are scheduled for 2018 and general elections for 2019).

Interviewed in the latest issue of the weekly paper “Magazine Independente” (MI), Vieira said that Frelimo “is losing its character, and is degenerating”.

“The Party no longer brings together workers, peasants and intellectuals”, he added. “Right now it is dominated by various kinds of functionaries, business people, and even those who loot the state”.

There was “a crowd of new crooks” who had entered Frelimo “and they are persecuting honourable, efficient and hard working people”. There was a real danger of losing the forthcoming elections – and Frelimo had already received “yellow cards”, in the shape of its declining vote in the 2013 and 2013 municipal and general elections.

“Nobody wants to live side by side with crooks”, Vieira said, whether they were small time “chicken thieves”, or senior state figures. “Jails are built for thieves, and corruption is the same as theft”.

Vieira was pleased that the Attorney-General’s Office is investigating the scandal of the secret, government guaranteed loans inherited from the previous executive, led by President Armando Guebuza, and he saw no reason why this should not produce results.

“If the government has transmitted information to the Attorney-General’s Office, if the latter has opened investigations, if the government has spoken on the matter in parliament, and if a parliamentary commission of inquiry has been set up, who are you to doubt all of this?”, he asked.

Asked about his supposed identification with the past, when he was a minister in the governments of the country’s first President, Samora Machel, Vieira said “I do not identify with the past, but with the present I am living in, and with the future I wish for myself, my children, my grandchildren and the rest of this country’s coming generations”.

Source: AIM