Mozambique Elections: A Renamo crisis is underway as Mondlane challenges Momade
In file CoM
Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, has begun the process of electing a new leader, with analysts saying this is being done at a time when ruling Frelimo is “in a complicated situation”.
Luca Bussotti, researcher and academic director of the Technical University of Mozambique, noted that “RENAMO is in a phase of great growth”, unlike Frelimo that “is in difficulties for not having a political agenda” and “has not made an original policy proposal in recent years”.
“The [Frelimo] party is experiencing a complicated internal situation,” said Bussotti, saying the last election had showed that.
Entangled in the corruption scandals and hidden debts contracted by the government, Frelimo has also witnessed a rise in the tone of internal contestation.
Last Friday, some party members demanded the dissolution of the committee in Quelimane, the fourth largest, because they were considered unable to continue in office due to successive electoral losses.
Also former President Joaquim Chissano, in an interview with the public radio station Rádio Moçambique, called for the “purification of the ranks” of the party.
“The party has to be honest. This is a job that needs to be persistent and in the party, we need to work on this aspect in depth,” said the former head of state.
With general elections scheduled for October, the successor of Afonso Dhlakama, who passed away last year, and future rival of current President Filipe Nyusi, will thus have a more favorable environment for change and the alternation of power is not impossible, experts believe.
“When a party stops doing politics, it can lose its power,” Bussotti predicts, considering that if Samito (Samora Machel Junior) decided to go ahead with a candidacy of his own, he would create serious difficulties for Frelimo “because it would be a novelty in the political landscape that always was bi-polarized, an uncontrollable variable that would unbalance this scenario”.
“Samito Machel’s candidacy for the elections would represent a serious risk for Frelimo,” he says.
Samora Machel Júnior, the son of the first President of the Republic of Mozambique, said in December he was prepared to take over Frelimo’s leadership and did not rule out the possibility of running for legislative or presidential elections if the party so decides.
For the academic, rather than a political, party, Frelimo is currently “a set of lobbies and interests” very fragmented, which nevertheless maintains power because “everyone has an interest”.
“In African countries, the difficulty of not relinquishing power is due to the fact that it is through political power that one reaches economic power. The richest men are heads of state,” said Bussotti.
An expert on African affairs, Eric Morier-Genoud, admits that the alternation of power is a possibility that worries Frelimo and that this force will try to prevent “by many means” that Renamo wins elections.
“There was a change within Frelimo that changed the president, the issue now is the transition within RENAMO itself. We do not know who it will be, but it will be an important step,” he said.
It is also necessary to take into account possible coalitions with other parties, namely the MDM (Movimento Democrático de Moçambique). If we go back in time in 1999, Renamo has an electoral union with the opposition parties and was very close to gaining power,” recalled the Professor of African History at Queen’s University in Belfast.
“I think we are at a similar time: who will reach power, what strategies will they adopt, what will be the position of the government, increasingly unpopular because of the economic crisis that many people associate with debt?…there may be some tiredness and a desire to change the population.”
Renamo holds an elective congress between today and Thursday to choose the successor of Dhlakama, who died of illness on May 3 last year.
The congress to take place in Gorongosa district of central Mozambique’s Sofala Province, will be attended by 700 delegates and 300 guests.
So far, there are three likely candidates: Afonso Dhlakama’s brother and military wing leader Elias, interim coordinator Ossufo Momade and current secretary-general Manuel Bissopo.
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