Mozambique Elections: Presidential candidate Mondlane says will ask Portuguese President to ‘leave neutrality aside’

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Mozambique Elections: Presidential candidate Mondlane says will ask Portuguese President to ‘leave neutrality aside’

1:58 CAT | 24 Jul 2024

FILE - For illustration purposes only. Venâncio Mondlane told Lusa that he had scheduled a meeting with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa at the Palácio de Belém , in Lisbon. [File photo: Wkimedia Commons]

Mozambican presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane told Lusa yesterday (July 23rd ) that he was going to ask the Portuguese president this Wednesday to leave neutrality aside because human and civic rights are at stake in Mozambique.

“When there is a clear situation of human rights violations, this neutrality ends up becoming complicity. You cannot be neutral when there is a clear human rights violation. This is no longer neutrality. This is complicity,” said Venâncio Mondlane, who told Lusa that he had scheduled a meeting with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa at the Palácio de Belém in the afternoon.

Venâncio Mondlane, a former deputy of Renamo, the main opposition party in Mozambique, is now the presidential candidate of the Democratic Alliance Coalition (CAD), a political formation that saw its chances of running for the legislative elections frustrated by the Mozambican National Elections Commission (CNE).

The CNE excluded the CAD from the general elections on October 9th for failing to meet certain legal requirements, the electoral body announced on the 18th.

The CAD appealed the decision to the Constitutional Council (CC), the last judicial instance, and scheduled a “peaceful march” for Saturday against the exclusion from the general elections.

On Tuesday, at a press conference in Maputo in which he announced the holding of the “peaceful march”, the president of the CAD, Manecas Daniel said it was up to the people to decide what should be done next, if the CC does not come to “restore the legality and truth.”

If the exclusion decided by the CNE continues, Mondlane says that the CAD will give the final say to the population, recognizing that “spirits are at an all-time high”, in a “time bomb”.

Mondlane said in statements to Lusa yesterday afternoon that he saw the CNE’s decision as an attempt to undermine Mozambican democracy.

“It is more than proven that the CNE’s decision is a more political decision than a legal one and, in this way, it means that if the Constitutional Council validates this, it will be another slat placed in that coffin in which democracy is being stifled,” he said.

“The [Mozambican] Constitution gives the right to resist illegal orders, illegal decisions. So, we will certainly give back to the people in the sense that our fight as CAD, using the legally available means, will have been done. So then we will ask and we will leave it to the people to act according to their perception and their will,” he added.

Venâncio Mondlane, who spoke to Lusa after a meeting in the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic with parliamentary vice-president Diogo Pacheco de Amorim from the Chega party, said that he also asked the Chega party not to be neutral when human and civic rights in Mozambique are at stake.

Pachecoam.fb_ — *Image: Alto Molocue TV/Facebook*

“What we ask is exactly that they do not remain mute and calm in the face of situations of suffocation and murder of democracy in Mozambique. One cannot claim precautions to avoid interference in internal affairs when one clearly knows that democracy is being stifled, is being murdered,” Mondlane stressed.

“No one can say they will allow their neighbour to be murdered and yet cannot intervene because one wants to respect aspects of sovereignty and I don’t know what. This is a discourse that we believe needs to be abandoned,” he reiterated.

READ: Mozambique Elections: Frelimo candidate Chapo visits Portugal

Mozambique Elections: Renamo criticises Portuguese President for meeting Chapo – AIM

The Constitutional Council approved, on June 24, the candidacies of Daniel Chapo, supported by the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), in power; Ossufo Momade, supported by Renamo; Lutero Simango, supported by the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), third parliamentary force; and Venâncio Mondlane, supported by CAD, for the position of President of the Republic.

The presidential elections will take place simultaneously with the legislative elections and elections for governors and provincial assemblies.

The current President of the Republic and of the Frelimo party, Filipe Nyusi, is constitutionally prevented from running again, because he is currently serving his second term as head of State, after being elected in 2015 and 2019.

Source: Lusa