Mozambique: PGR denounces ‘clandestine press’ – AIM report

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Mozambique: PGR denounces ‘clandestine press’ – AIM report

7:19 CAT | 28 Jan 2025

Screen grab: MBC TV

The Mozambican Attorney-General’s Office (PGR) has suddenly woken up to the fact that former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane is calling himself head of state and is issuing “decrees” which he expects citizens to obey.

The rest of the country has been aware of Mondlane’s orders ever since he started issuing them in November in live broadcasts transmitted over his Facebook feed. Since he returned to Mozambique from self-imposed exile on 9 January he has issued some 30 instructions, ranging from the banal to the malevolent, which anybody with access to a radio or computer could know about.

But it seems that the PGR only objected to Mondlane’s orders when they appeared in printed format, in a publication he calls “Jornal do Povo” (“Newspaper of the People”). Even then, it was not so much the content of Mondlane’s instructions which angered the PGR, but their form.

On Monday the PGR issued a statement denouncing “Jornal do Povo” simply because Mondlane had not registered it with the government press office, Gabinfo. This meant that “Jornal do Povo” falls into the category of “clandestine press”.

The fact that “Jornal do Povo” published something claiming to be a presidential decree “might lead to the erroneous perception that there is another channel for the publication of the normative acts of the government”. This was a violation of the Mozambican constitution which states that it is a prerogative of the state to publish government acts in the official gazette, the “Boletim da Republica”.

The PGR seemed much more concerned by Mondlane’s failure to register his publication with Gabinfo than by, for example, his incitement to citizens not to pay road tolls or water bills.

Registration with Gabinfo is a very simple procedure. Had Mondlane done this, and avoided calling his orders a government decree, he could have written exactly the same things, no matter how dangerous, without ruffling the feathers of the PGR.

The PGR has also suddenly discovered that Mondlane is trying to organise local elections in neighbourhoods, localities, administrative posts and districts, “outside of the norms legally established for this purpose”.

Any supposed “election” taking place outside of the law is not only illegal, but also null and void, and a subversion of the principles of the rule of law”, the PGR solemnly declared.

The PGR is quite right – but why has it waited until now to denounce sham elections? Mondlane has not been acting clandestinely. Quite publicly, he declared that elections would be held on 6 and 7 January in all neighbourhoods, localities, administrative posts and districts.

READ: Mozambique: Mondlane denies breaking the law, accuses PGR of being ‘politicized’

A bit of mathematics shows that Mondlane was calling for tens of thousands of separate elections to be held all over the country on the same two days. Almost none of these fake elections were held.

Mondlane’s supporters made a further attempt in mid-January, and claimed that an election was held in the Zambezia district of Gile.

But these efforts were so feeble that they hardly deserved the thundering denunciations from the PGR. Nonetheless, the PGR is threatening to take those involved to court.

Source: AIM