Mozambique Elections: Presidential candidate Mondlane pledges to end ‘sale of country’

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Mozambique Elections: Presidential candidate Mondlane pledges to end ‘sale of country’

8:45 CAT | 18 Sep 2024

Screen grab: Venâncio Mondlane /Facebook

In Mozambique, presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane has said that he will put an end to “the sale of” the country to multinationals if he wins in the elections of 9 October, accusing the current Frelimo president and government of treating the country “like a chicken coop” in which people have little or no autonomy.

“I am the only candidate who is willing to fight, to the last consequences, to defend the people, because we realise that our country is being sold off little by little,” said the candidate, who is supported exclusively by extra-parliamentary parties, during a rally in the district of Angónia, in Tete province, in the centre of the country.

Mondlane pointed to the presence of oil multinationals in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, and the armed violence that followed, as proof that Mozambique is being “negotiated [away] with big business”.

Mozambique, which has the third-largest natural gas reserves in Africa, currently has three development projects approved to exploit the gas reserves in the Rovuma basin, classified as among the largest in the world, off the coast of Cabo Delgado.

“I’m here to tell those who want to sell the country that this attempt to sell Mozambique is over,” he declared.

Mondlane also accused the governing Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) party of running the country like a “chicken coop” and of political persecution and intolerance.

“Are you chickens in these people’s coop?” he asked his listeners. “We have to put an end to political persecution, but for that to happen, the state has to serve the people and not a certain party.”

Mondlane promised basic services such as hospitals, health and food self-sufficiency for the population if he is elected in the October presidential elections.

“We are here to say something very simple: it is the government of Mozambique and not the government of Malawi that should help the people of Angonia,” he said, referring to the fact that the two countries are neighbours and share a long border, and that Rwandan forces are in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province helping government and local forces fight armed rebels there.

Formerly a member of parliament for the main opposition Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) party, until he left the organisation after being barred from running for its leadership, Mondlane saw the coalition whose candidates he supported in the legislative elections, also on 9 October, removed from the ballot papers. He now has the declared support of the extra-parliamentary forces Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos) and Democratic Revolution (RD).

Mozambique is holding general elections on 9 October, in a ballot that includes presidential, legislative, provincial assembly and provincial governor elections.

More than 17 million voters are registered to vote, including 333,839 registered abroad, according to official figures.

In addition to Mondlane, the presidential candidates are Daniel Chapo, supported by Frelimo, Ossufo Momade, supported by Renamo, and Lutero Simango, supported by the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), the third-largest parliamentary force.

Source: Lusa