Mozambique: Police try to hinder Renamo march in Gurue – AIM report

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Mozambique: Police try to hinder Renamo march in Gurue – AIM report

11:12 CAT | 22 Sep 2019

Photo: O País

The Mozambican police has claimed it was forced to intervene to change the route of an election march on Friday by the main opposition party, Renamo, through the streets of the municipality of Gurue, in the central province of Zambezia.

The spokesperson for the Zambezia provincial police command. Sidner Lonzo, told AIM in the provincial capital, Quelimane, that, to the surprise of the police, Renamo changed the agreed route of its march.

He claimed that Renamo wanted to march past “sovereign bodies” which “is not allowed by the law” – though in fact no sovereign bodies, as defined in the Constitution, are headquartered in Gurue.

He said the police had to intervene to persuade Renamo to return to the original route, “after which the march went ahead without any further inconvenience”.

Unfortunately for Lonzo, the confrontation between the police and Renamo in Gurue was filmed by the independent television station STV, and it showed that, after a lengthy argument, Renamo, led by the party’s candidate for Renamo provincial governor, Manuel de Araujo, did not follow police instructions but marched off on its desired route.

As Araujo led the marchers, he said repeatedly to the local police commander, in front of the cameras, “Go ahead and kill me! Kill me!”

Araujo claimed the electoral law was on Renamo’s side and the police could not dictate the route of the march.

This was a propaganda victory for Renamo, since, once the marchers had reached the site of their rally, it allowed the party’s leader and presidential candidate, Ossufo Momade to denounce the behaviour of the police.

Momade said the supposedly sensitive building on the route was just Gurue town hall, the headquarters of the municipality. He said that previous marches had gone past the presidential offices in Maputo, and the residence of the Zambezia provincial governor in Quelimane. Which of these buildings was more important?, he asked the crowd.

Source: AIM