Mozambique parliament backs move to extend military service to five years
in file CoM
Mozambique’s Assembly of the Republic (AR – parliament) today passed the draft Law of the Peace Agreement and National Reconciliation signed on the 6th of this month by Renamo and the Frelimo government, formally ending months of military clashes in the country.
The law was passed in general and in specific with votes in favour from 140 Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo) deputies, 52 National Resistance Mozambique (Renamo – the country’s main opposition party) deputies, and one from the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM – Mozambique’s third largest political party, and the one with the lowest number of deputies in the Assembly. Fourteen MDM members abstained from the vote.
The draft law of the Maputo Peace and National Reconciliation Agreement was sent to parliament by the President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi.
Filipe Nyusi signed the agreement with Renamo leader Ossufo Momade during the truce decreed on 27 December 2016 and unbroken since, ending months of military confrontation between the Defence and Security Forces and the armed wing of the main opposition party, following the challenge of the results of the 2014 general election.
The understandings provide for the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of Renamo’s armed wing and amnesty for persons who have committed crimes in the context of military violence related to clashes between government forces and Renamo.
The law approved today by the AR incorporates the Agreement of Cessation of Military Hostilities, which Filipe Nyusi and Ossufo Momade signed on the 1st of this month and which also ends the clashes between the two parties.
The Maputo Peace and National Reconciliation Agreement is the third between the Frelimo Government and Renamo.
The first was signed in Rome in 1992, ending the 16-year civil war, and the second in Maputo in September 2014 following clashes between Renamo’s armed wing and the Mozambican Defence and Security Forces prompted by the refusal of the main opposition party to recognise the results of the general election.
A breakaway group of Renamo combatants has criticised the party leadership and has already elected as leader Lieutenant General Mariano Nhongo, who has threatened further action on the ground and demanded that the government negotiate with him.
The group, which describes itself as an “entrenched in the woods” Renamo military structure with 11 provincial military units, says it considers the Peace and National Reconciliation Agreement signed by Mozambican head of state Filipe Nyusi and Ossufo Momade null and void, and that Ossufo Momade does not represent the military wing of the party.
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