Momade sacks Renamo secretary general Bissopo, other top officials

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Momade sacks Renamo secretary general Bissopo, other top officials

1:12 CAT | 18 Feb 2019

Manuel Bissopo. File photo: O País

Ossufo Momade, the president of Mozambique’s main opposition party, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), dismissed the party’s secretary general, Manuel Bissopo, and other leading officials, a party source has told Lusa.

The decision to remove Bissopo comes along with other changes in the party leadership, and as the Renamo leader prepares to speak to members about the “revitalisation” of the structure at a meeting of cadres scheduled for today in Maputo.

Mozambique has general elections in October, when, as a result of agreements reached between the government and the main opposition party, provincial governors will for the first time be elected by popular vote. Renamo aspires to power in a number of regions.

The order that formalises the departure of Manuel Bissopo, a despatch dated last Friday, does not explain the reason for the decision, nor does it indicate another person for the position.

Bissopo has served as secretary general since 2012 and was defeated in the vote for the Renamo presidency at the party’s 6th Congress in January which confirmed in position Momade, the interim leader announced two days after the death of the historic president Afonso Dhlakama, on May 3, 2018.

In another dispatch, the same source told Lusa, Momade also dismissed the chief of staff and three other officers of the party’s armed wing, transferring them from the Gorongosa base to former bases in the provinces of Manica and Tete.

Since being elected president of Renamo, Momade has already removed five provincial delegates – in Tete, Manica and Sofala in the centre of the country, Gaza in the south and Cabo Delegado in the north.

The district delegates of the Island of Mozambique (Nampula) and the city of Beira (Sofala) were also removed.

In the city of Beira last week, several Renamo members boycotted a provincial conference called for the inauguration of new bodies appointed by the party’s president, having themselves already elected parallel bodies.

Source: Lusa