Mozambique: Chapo’s election as Frelimo president aims to guarantee “single command”

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Mozambique: Chapo’s election as Frelimo president aims to guarantee “single command”

2:02 CAT | 14 Feb 2025

Photo: Lusa

The outgoing president of Frelimo, the ruling party, today argued that the choice of Daniel Chapo, the head of state, to preside over the ruling party in Mozambique, aims to guarantee “single command”.

“Current (…) and firm in our position, without pressure from anyone, we took the initiative to pass on the baton of party leadership to the new government cycle, thus maintaining the tradition of single command,” Filipe Nyusi explained during his opening speech at the meeting of the Central Committee of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) in Matola, on the outskirts of the Mozambican capital.

Frelimo’s 254-strong Central Committee is meeting today to elect Daniel Chapo, already sworn in as head of state, as president of the ruling party in Mozambique, in the third extraordinary session of the party’s highest body between congresses, a meeting that will also elect a new secretary-general.

As president of Frelimo, Chapo will replace Filipe Nyusi, who was President of the Republic for the last ten years.

All previous heads of state of Mozambique were also presidents of Frelimo, the party in power since 1975, and which now also has an absolute majority in parliament (171 seats).

For Filipe Nyusi, although the separation of powers between the party president and the head of state is currently being debated within and outside the party, Frelimo has decided to maintain the “tradition”.

“We do not intend to close this debate, as we do not have the authority to do so. However, we believe that this is a matter that requires further study and a decision by Frelimo’s highest body, the congress,” declared Nyusi.

According to Frelimo’s statutes, the Central Committee has the authority to “elect, from among its members, by a two-thirds majority, the party president, in the event of replacement due to death, resignation or incapacity”, upon proposal by the political committee. Therefore, given Nyusi’s departure before the end of his term, it will not be necessary to call a congress.

A law graduate from the Faculty of Law of Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo in 2000, Daniel Francisco Chapo, 48, was born in Inhaminga, Sofala province, central Mozambique, on January 6, 1977, making him the first president born after the country’s independence (1975).

Chapo, who has worked as a radio announcer, university lecturer and administrator, was, until the time he was nominated as Frelimo’s candidate by the Central Committee in May last year, a politician with a “low profile” who had governed the tourist province of Inhambane, in southern Mozambique, since 2016.

Considered by Frelimo as a “young candidate”, he took office as president of Mozambique on 15 January in the year in which the country celebrates 50 years of independence, a period marked, however, by the greatest contestation of the election results since the first elections in 1994.

Frelimoomm.lusa_

Since October, at least 327 people have died, including around two dozen minors, and around 750 have been shot during the protests, according to the electoral platform Decide, a non-governmental organisation that monitors the electoral processes.

These are demonstrations and strikes called, first, by former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who does not recognise the results. On the streets today, the protests are mostly led by young people, who question the 50 years of Frelimo government and, in addition to the argument of electoral truth, include, as motivations, unemployment and low levels of education, which, of the 32 million Mozambicans, affect a third of the approximately 9.4 million young people.

Essentially, in his manifesto, with the slogan “Let’s Work”, the priority is to “attack bureaucracy and corruption”, said Chapo, in an interview with Lusa in October, highlighting that governing the country was a “mission” that had been assigned to him by Frelimo.

Source: Lusa