Frelimo tells Beira members to stop squabbling

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Frelimo tells Beira members to stop squabbling

1:17 CAT | 06 Sep 2017

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The first secretary of the ruling Frelimo Party in the central Mozambican province of Sofala, Paulo Manjacunene, has urged Frelimo members to stop quarrelling among themselves and to concrete on winning back control of the provincial capital, Beira, in the 2018 municipal elections.

Cited by the independent television station STV, Manjucuenene told Frelimo members in Beira at the weekend that they should forget about the recent inner-party elections and work to ensure that a Frelimo mayor is elected.

The inner-party elections, held in the run-up to the 11th Frelimo congress, scheduled for the end of this month, saw Manjacunene re-elected as provincial first secretary. The results were clearly not to the liking of all party members, for Manjacunene, in front of the cameras, urged his fellow Frelimo militants to stop fomenting intrigues and gossip, about the internal elections.

“Right now, it doesn’t matter who won and who lost”, he said. “What matters is that we should unite our efforts and work together for the development of our province, and particularly to recover Beira Municipal Council. Only if we are united will we be able to achieve this goal”.

For the last 15 years Beira has been in the hands of opposition parties, and the mayor has been Daviz Simango. When he won for the first time, in 2003 he ran on the ticket of the main opposition party, the rebel movement Renamo.

But five years later, Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama refused to run Simango for a second term of office, and expelled him from Renamo. Simango then ran as an independent and won a crushing victory over both the Frelimo and the Renamo candidates.

In 2009 Simango founded his own party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), and it was as MDM leader that he won his third term of mayoral office in 2013.

The four other municipalities in Sofala – Dondo, Nhamatanda, Marromeu and Gorongosa – are currently all run by Frelimo. Asked by reporters whether the mayors of these four towns would stand for re-election, Manjacunene said he could not answer because no decision has yet been taken.

All would depend on Frelimo’s internal debates on choosing candidates. “There is no impediment to the current mayors expressing an intention to stand again”, he said. “But we will have to wait to find out whether they will really be the party’s candidates”.

Manjacunene added, however, that Frelimo in Sofala “is very satisfied” with the performance of the four mayors.

Source: AIM