South Africa guarantees Mozambicans protection against 'Operation Dudula' - report
Nyusi postpones State Council meeting in Mozambique
12:09 CAT | 03 Mar 2016
The meeting of the State Council that was convened by Filipe Nyusi for Wednesday, March 2 to discuss the political and military situation in the country was postponed to a date to be announced.
Reasons for the postponement were not given, Canalmoz reports, but the body’s secretary general, Amade Miquidade announced that the meeting may take place after the current parliamentary questions to the government session.
The State Council is a body established under the constitution to advise the President of the Republic. The President may call meetings of the Council whenever he thinks appropriate. He must consult the Council on the date of general elections, on the holding of any referendum, on dissolving the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, and on any declaration of war, or of a state of siege or state of emergency. Only the first of these, fixing the date of elections, has ever happened in Mozambique.
The President appoints four members of the Council. In addition to MDM leader and mayor of Beira Daviz Simango, Nyusi appointed former Prime Minister Alberto Vaquina, reappointed to a second term former defence minister Alberto Chipande, who fired the first shots in Mozambique’s independence war on 25 September 1964, and Graca Machel, widow of the country’s first president, Samora Machel, and now a prominent activist for the rights of children and women.
The other members of the Council of State are:
– The chairperson of the Assembly of the Republic (Veronica Macamo)
– The Prime Minister (Carlos Agostinho do Rosario)
– The chairperson of the Constitutional Council (Hermenegildo Gamito)
– The ombudsman (Jose Abudo)
– Former Presidents of the Republic (Joaquim Chissano and Armando Guebuza)
– Former chairpersons of the Assembly of the Republic (Marcelino dos Santos and Eduardo Mulembue)
– The runner-up in the latest presidential elections (Afonso Dhlakama)
– Seven “figures of recognized merit” chosen by parliament.
The last time the Council met was under Nyusi’s predecessor, Armando Guebuza, in July 2014. That meeting discussed preparations for the October general elections, and the politico-military tensions arising from Dhlakama’s decision to use his militia to wage a low-intensity insurrection in the central province of Sofala. Immediately after that meeting, Renamo-appointed Councillor of State António Muchanga was arrested.
The second time t Filipe Nyusi calls a presidential consultative body
Last week saw a meeting of the National Defense and Security Council which analyzed the political-military and social situation and recommended a meeting between the president and the head of Renamo for talk to solve the crisis.
There are currently frequent reports of clashes between the military and armed Renamo forces, particularly in the central provinces of the country, against a backdrop of defence and security forces’ requests for more money to sustain convoys and deployments in conflict zones.
The National Council for Defence and Security is composed of the Ministers of Defence, Atanasio M’tumuke, Interior, Basilio Monteiro, Foreign Affairs, Oldermiro Baloi, Economy and Finance, Adriano Maleiane, Transport and Communications, Carlso Mesquita, and Justice, Abdurremane Lino de Almeida, the Director General of Information and State Security Service (SISE) , the chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Mozambique Defense, the general commander of the PRM, and are part of it too Mariano Matsinha, Antonio Hama Thai, Joaquim Munhepe, Marina Pachinuapa, all of Frelimo, and generals José Manuel and Inácio João Reis, from Renamo.
Source: Canalmoz / AIM
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