Frelimo Central Committee Will Reshuffle Secretariat

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Frelimo Central Committee Will Reshuffle Secretariat

10:22 CAT | 15 Jan 2016

Lusa (File)

The extraordinary meeting of the Central Committee of Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo Party, scheduled for next month, will restructure the Party’s secretariat, but will not elect a new general secretary, according to Damiao Jose, the Secretary for Mobilisation and Propaganda, cited in Thursday’s issue of the independent daily “O Pais”.

The agenda of the meeting has just one point, the restructuring of the Secretariat, Jose said. This is necessary in order to implement a directive from the last Central Committee meeting, which determined that no member of the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, or of the provincial assemblies, can also hold office inside the Frelimo structures.

This is regarded as a step in the separation of party and state. The practical result is that the three Secretariat members who currently also sit in parliament will have to stand down from the Secretariat.

They are: Sergio Pantie, Central Committee Secretary for Party Organisation, and deputy head of the Frelimo parliamentary group; Edson Macuacaua, Central Committee for Training and Cadres, and chairperson of the Assembly’s Commission for Constitutional and Legal Affairs; and Damiao Jose himself who currently combines his secretariat position with membership of the Assembly.

“It’s a fact that all cadres who have positions in the Central Committee and are also parliamentary deputies will have to leave the Secretariat”, Jose confirmed.

The Frelimo general secretary, Eliseu Machava, is not a member of the Assembly, and so is not covered by the directive. Replacing him was not on the agenda, Jose declared. Likewise, there was nothing on the agenda about electing new or sacking old members of the Frelimo Political Commission.

But last year, “it’s not on the agenda” was the answer given by Jose when reporters asked him if the Central Committee meeting scheduled for February-March 2015 would replace Armando Guebuza with Filipe Nyusi as President of Frelimo. Jose insisted that Guebuza would serve out his full term of office as Party leader, and that did not expire until the next Frelimo Congress, scheduled for 2017.

But the Central Committee changed its agenda, and Guebuza fell, replaced by Nyusi who, as has been normal practice within Frelimo, combined the role of President of the Republic and President of Frelimo in one and the same person.

The Central Committee could do the same thing this time, changing its agenda so as to elect a new General Secretary and a new Political Commission. Last week’s issue of the independent weekly “Savana” confidently predicted that the meeting will elect a new General Secretary, and even said that the four people in the running to succeed Machava are former prime minister Luisa Diogo, former minister of energy and mineral resources, Castigo Langa, former environment minister Alcinda Abreu, and prominent parliamentarian Ana Rita Sithole.

Source: AIM