Row between Frelimo and MDM in Beira Assembly – AIM report

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Row between Frelimo and MDM in Beira Assembly – AIM report

8:15 CAT | 13 Oct 2016

mhoje_beiramunicipalcouncilcrv_photo_jpg

Magazine CRV / A photograph of the Beira Municipal Assembly session on Monday, October 10 2016

Disorderly scenes marred a session of the Beira Municipal Assembly on Monday, when members from the ruling Frelimo Party clashed with the Assembly majority, from the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), over amending this year’s municipal budget.

The Beira Municipal Council, for the second time this year, presented an amended budget because the municipality is running out of funds. The Council argued that expenditure had to be cut because Beira had not received money from the central government’s Municipal Compensation Fund, and because the publicly owned electricity company, EDM, had also not transferred the money it owes the municipality.

EDM collects the garbage removal fee, which is added to the monthly electricity bill of each household. But since December 2015 this money has not been deposited in the municipal coffers.

According to a report carried by the independent television station STV, the Frelimo group in the Assembly demanded evidence of these claims – which the Mayor of Beira, and leader of the MDM, Daviz Simango, promptly provided.

The proof included correspondence between the Municipal Council and EDM, in which EDM apologized for not transferring any money to the Council since last December. The garbage fee amounts to about a million meticais (around 13,000 US dollars, at current exchange rates) a month.

But the head of the Frelimo group, Antonio Pensado, then claimed that this evidence had been forged. He said that Frelimo had proof that both the garbage removal fee and money from the Municipal Compensation Fund had been channeled to Beira Council.

The MDM group demanded that Pensado make copies of his alleged proof so that all members of the Assembly could see it. Instead he just read the document out.

An infuriated MDM member strode up to the rostrum, snatched the document from Pensado, and delivered it to the board of the Municipal Assembly, requesting that it be photocopied. However, a second Frelimo member, Manuel Severino, immediately recovered the document.

A shouting match then broke out, and matters only calmed down when the chairperson of the Assembly, Ricardo Langue, ordered the Frelimo group to make copies of the document. But by the end of the Monday session the document had not been distributed.

When the amended budget was put to a vote, the MDM’s absolute majority in the Assembly guaranteed that it passed.

Interviewed by STV, Simango criticised Frelimo for its failure to share its alleged evidence with the rest of the Assembly.

He pointed out that EDM has a contract with Beira Municipal Council and not with any political party. He believed that the sudden appearance of a supposed EDM document, which nobody in the Council had ever seen, indicated that a criminal offence had been committed, and he demanded that those behind the document should be held responsible.

Source: AIM