Opposition says Nyusi’s speech on State of the Nation is full of good intentions and laconic expressions

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Opposition says Nyusi’s speech on State of the Nation is full of good intentions and laconic expressions

12:07 CAT | 20 Dec 2016

A Bola / President Nyusi addressing parliament on Monday, December 19 2016.

Mozambican opposition parties in parliamentary expressed dissatisfaction with president’s State of the Nation address yesterday, saying it was a “presentation full of laconic intentions and expressions”.

“We were expecting concrete actions, but all we heard was good intentions,” Ivone Soares, head of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, the main opposition party), told the press.

For the head of the Renamo bench, although Filipe Nyusi “touched a little” on the most important issues of the day, his speech did not present concrete solutions for the end of the political and military conflict in the country, “which all Mozambicans were expecting”.

“The president said that the nation remains firm, but firm in what?” Soares asked, adding that the only hopeful note in Nyusi’s speech was the openness he expressed to talking with Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama.

“We must demand that what he said today really gets done,” she said, noting that Nyusi’s priority should be to withdraw government troops from the Gorongosa mountain range in the centre of the country where the leader of Renamo is presumed to be living.

Silvério Ronguane, deputy of the Mozambican Democratic Movement (MDM), the third-largest Mozambican political party, said that the speech did not meet the expectations of the people, considering it full of laconic expressions and little else.

“The head of state is not a journalist, but someone who must watch over the well-being of Mozambicans. It is not enough to be full of laconic expressions. We no longer want words, we want action,” said Silvério Ronguane. The political intolerance that persists in Mozambique reveals that the country “still has many challenges ahead”, he added.

Source: Lusa