Renamo boycotts Manica Assembly: “Its members fear being harassed and murdered” – Mozambique

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Renamo boycotts Manica Assembly: “Its members fear being harassed and murdered” – Mozambique

8:04 CAT | 30 Sep 2016

Mozambique’s main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo has boycotted a session of the Manica provincial assembly, on the grounds that its members fear being harassed and murdered.

Renamo has 39 members in the Manica assembly, but a walk-out is not sufficient to deprive the assembly of its quorum. The ruling Frelimo Party has a narrow majority, with 40 members, and the second opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) has one member.

The chairperson of the assembly, Rosita Lubrino, cited by the independent television station STV, said that the Renamo members appeared for the first two days of the Assembly session, but then boycotted the meeting.

“We didn’t receive any communication from them, either in writing or orally”, said Lubrino. she said the Assembly would invoke legal mechanisms to oblige the Renamo members to explain their absence.

The Frelimo group in the Assembly suggested that Renamo avoided the meeting “out of shame”, because at the previous Assembly session they had boasted that within two months Renamo would be ruling six provinces, including Manica, but nothing of the sort had happened.

“We have seen the Renamo system of governance”, Frelimo added. “It consists of stealing medicines from the population and throwing them away, stealing cattle, burning vehicles and killing the people whom they say voted for them”.

The head of the Renamo group in the Assembly, however, told STV that the boycott resulted from fear that the Renamo members would be assassinated, a fear that was stoked when a pistol was discovered in the possession of a Frelimo member, Joao Roque, while the Assembly was in session.

“We were absent because of that pistol”, the Renamo group insisted.

Source: AIM