Mozambique: President calls for ‘genuine reconciliation’ for definitive peace

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Mozambique: President calls for ‘genuine reconciliation’ for definitive peace

9:30 CAT | 05 Apr 2018

O País

Mozambique’s president, Filipe Nyusi, on Thursday called for “genuine reconciliation” to achieve a definitive peace, arguing that any consensus reached by the Frelimo government and the main opposition, Renamo, should reflect the “will of the people”.

The president was speaking at the Higher Institute of International Relations (ISRI) in Maputo, where he gave an address titled ‘International and Domestic Environment for Peace in Mozambique: Actors, Consensuses, Challenges and Prospects’.

“We need to be ready to pardon one another and to start a genuine process of reconciliation,” Nyusi said in his address.

According to the president, any agreements reached in peace talks between the government and Renamo should reflect the “real will of the people”, as only this can guarantee legitimacy.

The challenges that the country faces, he added, can only be overcome if Mozambicans unite and take on the responsibility to realise the future of which they dream

In recent years, he went on, a “feeling of exclusion” has spread in various segments of society that, to some degree, is a cause of the situation in which the two main parties have faced off against one another, to the point of many violent clashes in recent years.

“It is not just poverty that is the cause of the conflict,” he said. “The biggest cause of the conflict is the feeling of social injustice and of unequal distribution of wealth, of power and of resources.”

Although in 1992 the then Frelimo government and Renamo signed a General Peace Accord, the country has suffered several bouts of violence in the wake of disputed elections.

At the start of this year Nyusi submitted to parliament proposals for a revision of the Constitution that foresees the decentralisation of government in the country, in line with an agreement reached with Renamo. Deputies from Frelimo, Renamo and the third-largest party, the MDM, approved plans for next year for unprecedented elections for provincial governors and mayors.

The plan at present lacks on agreement between Nyusi and Renamo on the nomination of district administrators, according to the parliamentary committee charged with overseeing the plan.

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Source: Lusa