Frelimo youth and women want second term for Nyusi

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Frelimo youth and women want second term for Nyusi

7:25 CAT | 28 Sep 2017

O País

The youth and women’s wings of Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo Party have urged President Filipe Nyusi to stand for a second term, not only as President of Frelimo but as President of the Republic.

Bringing greetings to the Frelimo 11th Congress in the southern city of Matola, now in its third day, the general secretary of the Mozambican Women’s Organisation (OMM), Mariazinha Niquice, declared “we Mozambican women want to guarantee our total and unconditional support for you as candidate in the 2019 general elections. We women are with you”.

She congratulated Nyusi for meeting on 6 August with Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the Renamo rebels, in the bush of the central district of Gorongosa. Niquice regarded this as an act of “historic courage”.

“We women say to our President – have courage and strength in the search for peace”, she declared.

Much the same sentiment shone through in the message delivered to the congress by Mety Gondola, the general secretary of the Mozambican Youth Organisation (OJM). He too believed that Nyusi should be the Frelimo candidate in the 2019 presidential election.

The Association of Veterans of the National Liberation Struggle (ACLLN) did not go quite as far in its message – though it has suggested, on previous occasions, that Nyusi would be the natural candidate for 2019.

The ACLLN general secretary, Fernando Faustino, stressed the qualities of Nyusi in the search for a definitive peace, claiming that his visit to Gorongosa displayed “humility, patience, tolerance, brotherhood, friendship and calm”.

Nyusi’s stance was also key in attracting national and foreign private investment “thus ensuring macro-economic stabilization and the recovery of investors’ confidence, factors that will speed up the growth of our economy”, Faustino said.

For the Congress to choose the candidate for the 2019 election will require a change in the Frelimo statutes. Currently, the candidate is chosen, not by the Congress but by the Central Committee.

Furthermore, the 2019 presidential election is still over two years away, and although the Frelimo tradition is that a sitting President should be allowed to run for a second term, other possible candidates could appear in that time.

For the last presidential election, in October 2014, Frelimo did not choose Nyusi as its candidate until the central committee meeting of February-March of that year. He faced four other candidates, and the secret ballot election ran to two rounds, with Nyusi defeating former prime minister Luisa Diogo in the second round.

Source: AIM