Renamo member Mondlane quits party to run for presidency as independent – Mozambique Elections

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Renamo member Mondlane quits party to run for presidency as independent – Mozambique Elections

1:48 CAT | 04 Jun 2024

File photo: Social Media

Mozambican politician Venâncio Mondlane resigned on Monday as a member of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the largest opposition party, and intends to run for the presidency of the country in the general elections in October.

Venâncio Mondlane resigned as a member of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) ‘as a result of a deep awareness of the need to seek more efficient means and a favourable political atmosphere to continue his fight in defence of full democracy’, reads the resignation document, published yesterday by the politician on his Facebook page.

In another document, sent to the Renamo secretary-general, Venâncio Mondlane also resigned as a member of the largest Mozambican opposition party, at a time when he stated his intention to run for president in the general elections on 9 October.

A member of Renamo since 2018, the politician says he made the decision after deep reflection and because of the need to ‘seek alternative means to continue promoting the ethics, principles and values of a full democracy’.

On 24 May, Renamo stated that Venâncio Mondlane was prohibited from using the party’s symbols in promoting his image as an independent candidate for the Presidency of the Republic.

‘If a person is going to run as an independent candidate [in the presidential elections], it is obvious and logical that he should promote his initiative as the candidate that he is, but that he should stop using the Renamo name, flag and T-shirts,’ said Arnaldo Chalaua, a member of parliament and spokesman for the Renamo parliamentary caucus, at a press conference in Maputo.

Venâncio Mondlane, 50, who was Renamo’s candidate in the last municipal elections in Maputo in 2023, began collecting the 10,000 signatures needed to run for president in the October elections in May, after failing to run for the leadership of Renamo at the congress held the same month.

The congress was marked by the exclusion of his candidacy for the leadership, as he did not fulfil the requirements of the profile defined by the party’s governing bodies.

Mondlane still appealed to the courts to force the inclusion of his candidacy, but despite an injunction that was accepted by the court, the congress did not change the list of candidates put to the vote or allow him to enter the main meeting.

The leader of Renamo, Ossufo Momade, 63, will be the party’s candidate for the post of country’s president, according to the decision taken by the congress of that political formation, which reappointed him to the leadership.

Ossufo Momade has been criticised both externally and internally for his alleged inertia in the face of supposed irregularities in the Mozambican local elections last October, and has also been accused of negligence in the situation of the party’s guerrillas who were demobilised in the light of the peace agreement with the government.

Mozambique is holding general elections on 9 October, which include, in addition to legislative and provincial elections, presidential elections, in which the current President, Filipe Nyusi, can no longer run because he has reached the constitutional limit of two terms in office.

Source: Lusa