Mozambique: Nyusi urges rational use of water
Photo: Sala da Paz
The end-of-year sitting of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, came to a close on Thursday, with bitter exchanges between the heads of the parliamentary groups of the ruling Frelimo Party, and of the main opposition party, Renamo.
The head of the Renamo group, Viana Magalhaes, defended the Renamo disruption of the State of the Nation address given by President Filipe Nyusi the previous day.
Throughout a speech lasting for more than two hours, Renamo heckled the president, sang and chanted. “We want electoral justice!” and “We want our votes!”, they shouted, referring to the evidence that the municipal elections held on 11 October had been marred by widespread fraud.
Magalhaes claimed “We did what we did because of those who stole the votes. The people asked us to demonstrate”
He also denounced the bill passed by the Assembly which sets up a sovereign wealth fund, which will hold part of the revenues from the liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.
Without offering the slightest evidence, Magalhaes claimed that the government would help itself to money from this fund whenever it wanted.
The head of the Frelimo group, Sergio Pantie, claimed that Renamo’s attitude resulted from its defeat in the municipal elections. Renamo, however, backed up by independent observers, argues that in major cities, such as Maputo, Matola and Nampula, it did not suffer a legitimate defeat, but had victory snatched from it by widespread fraud.
Pantie attacked the “disrespect” shown by Renamo for the head of state, but argued that Nyusi had defeated the hecklers. For, despite the deafening racket inside the parliamentary chamber, modern technology assured that Nyusi could be heard clearly outside by anybody listening to the Assembly’s proceedings on their radio or television sets.
He pointed out that the Renamo group could, under the parliamentary standing orders, have been expelled from the chamber. That did not happen, Pantie said, thanks to the patience shown by the parliamentary chairperson, Esperanca Bias, “who proved there is room for all Mozambicans inside her heart”.
Bias herself, in her closing speech, said that although the right to demonstrate is enshrined in the Mozambican Constitution, it should not be confused with “acts of vandalism”.
The Assembly, she said, “should guarantee that the President makes his address in a solemn and calm atmosphere. That is not what we witnessed yesterday, since Renamo tried to disturb the session. In the name of the Renamo parliamentary group, I would like to present our apologies to the head of state and to the Mozambican people”.
Renamo did not ask Bias to apologise on its behalf, and showed no sign of apologizing for itself.
Lutero Simango, head of the parliamentary group of the second opposition force, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), declared that 2023 will go down in history “as the year of the attempt to liquidate multi-party democracy and the freedom of expression”.
The municipal elections, he said, “were manipulated, the people’s will was not respected, and para-military forces interfered. The irregularities had a substantial influence on the results. Ballot box stuffing adulterated the results”.
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