Luxury protocol vehicles bought at a time of austerity – Mozambique

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Luxury protocol vehicles bought at a time of austerity – Mozambique

7:07 CAT | 14 Jun 2017

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The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, has spent 228 million meticais (3.8 million US dollars, at current exchange rates) on purchasing 18 Mercedes Benz saloon cars for the members of the Assembly’s governing board, its Standing Commission.

As this decision becomes more widely known, a wave of indignation is spreading through Mozambican social media, contrasting this expenditure with the general austerity and belt-tightening the country is facing.

So far few of the parliamentarians themselves have commented on the matter. Lutero Simango, head of the parliamentary group of the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), cited in Tuesday’ issue of the independent newssheet “Mediafax”, admitted that public indignation at this purchase is “legitimate”.

“I have received the Mercedes”, he said, “and I’m only using it as a protocol vehicle” (i.e. on Assembly business, and not for personal trips).

He was reluctant to say any more, before the matter had been discussed in the Standing Commission. “My obligation is to react inside the body itself (the Standing Commission) and not in the press”, he said. “But the concern is legitimate”.

A second MDM deputy, Venancio Mondlane, has started a petition among deputies, protesting against the purchase, regarding the acquisition of such luxury vehicles as “an insult to the peaceful and martyred Mozambican nation”.

Mondlane called on all those deputies “who still have some morality, and defend ethics that are going extinct” to sign his petition.

Antonio Muchanga, the national spokesperson for the Renamo rebels, blamed the government. He claimed that the assembly had only requested protocol vehicles for the members of the Standing Commission, but had not specified the make. It was the government that had opted for the Mercedes Benz vehicles, he told “Mediafax”.

The spokesperson for the Standing Commission, and deputy of the ruling Frelimo Party, Mateus Katupha, declined to comment, since he was not in a position to take any decision. When “Mediafax” pressed him further, he hung up the phone.

Speaking to the independent television station STV, the National Budget Director in the Finance Ministry, Rogerio Nkomo, defended the purchase, on the grounds that the Standing Commission members have a right to such vehicles.

He said it was legitimate that the senior parliamentarians “be transported in protocol cars of that level, as happens with the members of other sovereign bodies of the state”.

Nkomo said the process of importing these vehicles began in early 2016, and was only completed this year.

He dismissed the cost of the vehicles as a relatively small sum in comparison with the entire Mozambican state budget. This does not answer concerns of the symbolism of buying luxury vehicles at a time of general austerity, when most Mozambicans are obliged to travel in cramped and unsafe minibuses or on the back of pick-up trucks.

Source: AIM