Mozambique: Opposition parties demand “scrutiny” on the cost of war

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Mozambique: Opposition parties demand “scrutiny” on the cost of war

6:08 CAT | 26 Apr 2021

Image: TVM

Mozambican parliamentary opposition parties on Thursday demanded “scrutiny” of the cost of war in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, accusing the government of “failure” and warning of the risk of the conflict being used for the “illicit enrichment of the elites”.

The requirement was made during the second and last day of questions to the government session in the Assembly of the Republic.

“The defence and security sector must be scrutinised, because elites in times of war use this sector for their illicit enrichment,” said Deputy Fernando Bismarque of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), Mozambique’s third-largest parliamentary party.

Insisting on a reply to the question that the MDM had already posed on Wednesday about the costs of the fight against “terrorists” and the use of “mercenaries” in Cabo Delgado, Fernando Bismarque accused the government of making “a secret” of expenditure on the conflict in the north of the country.

“It is the Government’s role to render accounts to the Assembly of the Republic. It is not and should not be any state secret, because it is this House that approved the State Budget and we are within the scope of our constitutional and regimental powers to oversee government action,” the MDM deputy said.

The Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the main opposition party, said that the executive had failed in its governmental role, highlighting “the lack of answers” to the questions posed by the opposition as evidence of the lack of ideas within the government.

“According to what happened here, where what we had was the lack of responses to worrying situations in terms of government action, this Government has failed,” Renamo deputy António Muchanga said.

The Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo), the ruling party, described the government’s refusal to debate issues related to the activities of the Defence and Security Forces in fighting the insurgents in Cabo Delgado as “sensible”, emphasising that war strategy was not discussed in public.

“Unfortunately, there are voices that take terrorism lightly, forgetting that Mozambique is not the only country in Africa to be plagued by terrorism,” said Francisco Mucanheia, a Frelimo deputy.

In the final speech of the questioning session to the executive, the prime minister, Carlos Agostinho do Rosário, called for “prudence” in demanding the disclosure of aspects related to military operations in Cabo Delgado, reiterating that the matter is “sensitive”.

“As we said in our intervention yesterday [Wednesday], in this great House of the People, issues of a military nature such as strategy, tactics, logistics and means used to combat terrorism are reserved for the Defence and Security Forces,” Agostinho do Rosario declared.

Armed groups have terrorised Cabo Delgado since 2017, with some attacks claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State, in a wave of violence that has already caused more than 2,500 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project, and 714,000 people displaced, according to the Mozambican government.

The most recent attack, on March 24, was carried out against the town of Palma, causing dozens of deaths and injuries in numbers yet to be ascertained.

Mozambican authorities regained control of the town, but the attack led oil company Total to indefinitely abandon the main construction site of the gas project scheduled to start production in 2024 and on which many of Mozambique’s expectations for economic growth in the next decade are based.

Source: Lusa / TVM