Mozambique: Pensions for former guerrillas condition for peace, says Renamo - AIM
Mariano Nhongo. [File photo: Lusa]
Renamo member and academic Alberto Ferreira said yesterday that the leader of Renamo’s self-proclaimed military junta, Mariano Nhongo, was “being used as an instrument” to weaken the party both from within and without the organisation.
Alberto Ferreira recently declared his affiliation with the opposition Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) while serving as director of the Faculty of Philosophy at Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), the oldest and largest higher education institution in the country.
In an interview with Lusa, Ferreira said that Mariano Nhongo’s challenge to the leadership of Renamo president Ossufo Momade was the result of manipulation by forces from both inside and outside the main opposition party.
“There is great instrumentalisation, whether from within Renamo or from outside. Mr Nhongo is being used as an instrument by all sectors,” he said.
It could not be natural that, less than a year after Ossufo Momade was elected with a comfortable congressional majority, his legitimacy should be undermined, Ferreira said.
“Nhongo has no reason to either take up arms or contest Ossufo Momade’s victory,” he emphasised.
To back up his hypothesis that the leader of Renamo’s self-proclaimed military junta was being manipulated, Alberto Ferreira pointed out that Mariano Nhongo had recorded an audio appealing to the electorate not to vote for Ossufo Momade in the presidential, threatening armed actions if the Renamo presidential candidate won.
“It was perceivable that Nhongo was being used,” he said.
Although the crisis caused by the Renamo Military Junta has internal origins, the solution also involves the intervention of the state organs, because it is an armed group, Ferreira said.
Renamo’s self-proclaimed military junta challenges Ossufo Momade’s leadership, accusing him of being a government agent who has damaged the main opposition party in the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) negotiations linked to the peace agreement signed on 6 August between the main opposition party and the government.
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