Renamo insists Araujo is still mayoral candidate

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Renamo insists Araujo is still mayoral candidate

8:45 CAT | 04 Sep 2018

Photo: Manuel de Araujo / Facebook

The head of the parliamentary group of Mozambique’s main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, Ivone Soares, has insisted that Manuel de Araujo remains Renamo’s mayoral candidate for the central city of Quelimane in the forthcoming municipal elections, even though he has been disqualified.

Araujo was already major of Quelimane – but he was elected (in 2011 and again in 2013) on the ticket of a different party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM). In July, Araujo defected from the MDM to Renamo, and almost immediately Renamo announced he would be its mayoral candidate for Quelimane.

ALSO READ: In Maputo as in Quelimane: Municipal assembly convenes extraordinary session to ‘oust’ MDM dissidents

Araujo does not seem to have consulted the municipal legislation before becoming a turncoat. For the 1997 law on the administrative supervision of municipalities states clearly that any municipal office holder who switches his allegiance to a party other than the one for which he was elected will lose his position.

Last week, the Council of Ministers (Cabinet) acted on this and sacked Araujo as Mayor. Despite his dismissal, Araujo has insisted that he s still Mayor and is appealing against the government decision to the Administrative Tribunal.

A further complication for Renamo is that a mayor who is sacked is not eligible to stand in the next round of elections. So, if the Administrative Tribunal agrees with the Council of Ministers, Renamo will have to remove Araujo from its list of candidates for Quelimane. The likelihood of Araujo winning his appeal seems thin indeed – the 1997 law is crystal clear, and there is little room for interpretation.

Soares, however, speaking to Renamo members in Quelimane on Friday, insisted that the nomination of Araujo as mayoral candidate was in line with the Mozambican constitution. Cited by the independent television station TV, she claimed that the government dismissed Araujo as mayor for purely political party reasons, since it did not want to see Araujo heading the Renamo list.

“We have the Constitution”, she declared. “The Constitution does not belong to Frelimo, it belongs to the people. Because we know the Constitution, we are going to use and defend it, because nobody should be above the Constitution, inventing their own rules”.

But she did not state which article of the Constitution the Council of Ministers had supposedly violated – for there is no such article. The Constitution lays down general guidelines and leaves the details of elections up to ordinary laws.

Furthermore, until now nobody has ever suggested that the 1997 law is unconstitutional. Renamo has made no attempt to repeal it or alter it in any way.

Soares insisted that the decisions to disqualify both Manuel de Araujo and Venancio Mondlane (Renamo mayoral candidate in Maputo) were taken solely in order to harm Renamo. Yet both Araujo and Mondlane only joined Renamo two months ago – although for Araujo, it was a case of rejoining, since he had been a Renamo member from 2004 to 2009, when he jumped ship to join the newly formed MDM.

Source: AIM