Mozambique Elections: Voters riot outside STAE in Vilankulo, police uses tear gas - report
Photo: Deutsche Welle
The outgoing Municipal Assembly in the central Mozambican city of Quelimane on Wednesday tried to shut down the City Council in protest against non-payment of wages to the Assembly members, according to a report by the independent television station STV.
The 22 members of the Assembly say they have not received any payment from the Council for the last three months. So on Wednesday they moved to close the Council down, which obliged the police to surround the Council building to prevent a shutdown of its activities.
But the key problem is political, rather than financial, in that the Municipal Assembly does not recognise the legitimacy of the Mayor of Quelimane, Manuel de Araujo. Both Araujo and the outgoing Assembly were elected in the 2013 municipal elections, when Araujo stood on the ticket of the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), consolidating the position he had won as mayor in a 2011 by-election.
The main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, boycotted the 2013 elections. As a result the Municipal Assembly consists exclusively of members of the MDM (in a majority) and of the ruling Frelimo Party.
In July, Araujo defected from the MDM and joined Renamo. Much to the disgust of Quelimane MDM members, Renamo immediately proposed Araujo as its mayoral candidate in the municipal elections held on 10 October.
Renamo won in Quelimane – but both the MDM and Frelimo insist that Araujo cannot continue as mayor. The government sacked him in late August, precisely because of his switch in party allegiance.
The government justified its decision to sack Araujo on the basis of a clause in the 1997 law on administrative supervision of municipalities, which states that “office holders in municipalities shall lose their office if, after the elections, they join a party or list different from the one for which they presented themselves to the electorate”.
Under this law, not only would Araujo lose his position as mayor, but he would not be eligible to run in the next round of municipal elections – that is, in the elections held on 10 October.
So it was hardly surprising that Araujo appealed against the government’s decision to the Administrative Tribunal.
Over three months have passed and the Administrative Tribunal has still taken no decision on what seems an open and shut case.
With Araujo still in office, the Municipal Assembly has been refusing to cooperate with him. In particular, the Assembly has not passed the amended budget for 2018 which the Council submitted. The Assembly members suspect that the non-payment of their wages is Araujo’s revenge for not passing the Council’s budget.
The Assembly chairperson, Domingos Albuquerque of the MDM, said that, while it was true that the Administrative Tribunal had not yet issued a ruling, “no authority has yet confirmed whether or not Manuel de Araujo is mayor of Quelimane”.
Rijone Bambino, head of the Frelimo group in the Assembly, said “regardless of whether Araujo is mayor, we demand from those in authority that they tell us what procedures we have to follow faced with a situation like this which seems chaotic”.
He wondered how Araujo could come to a session of the Assembly as a member of Renamo “when he is completing a term of office to which he was elected on the MDM ticket”.
When STV tried to contact Araujo about the unpaid wages, it found he was out of the country. Indeed, a habitual criticism of Araujo is that he is an absentee major, spending much of his time outside Quelimane.
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