Struggle for national unity continues – Frelimo CC Secretary for Mobilisation and Propaganda

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Struggle for national unity continues – Frelimo CC Secretary for Mobilisation and Propaganda

8:17 CAT | 23 Sep 2016

Antonio Niquice, Central Committee Secretary for Mobilisation and Propaganda, on Friday urged young Mozambicans “to make their own the legacy of the generation of 25 September”.

He was referring to the date, in 1964, when Frelimo launched its armed struggle for national liberation for Portuguese colonial rule.

The struggle the Frelimo guerrillas had launched on 25 September 1964 continued today, he added, in the shape of the struggle against poverty, “and the continued struggle for national unity and against all threats to the stability of the democratic state”.

President Filipe Nyusi, he continued, “is working to ensure that Mozambicans remain a single united people”.

The main threat, Niquice added, came from the rebel movement Renamo, which insists on maintaining an illegal armed force, and on launching attacks against defenceless civilians in parts of the country.

mhoje_niquice_photo_jpg — Frelimo’s Central Committee Secretary for Mobilisation and Propaganda António Niquice

Asked whether Frelimo would use its parliamentary majority to cut off state funding to Renamo, Niquice did not give a straight answer. Currently, although the Renamo militia is waging war against the Mozambican state, Renamo continues to draw a subsidy from the state budget because of its parliamentary representation, and Renamo parliamentary deputies continue to receive their wages every month.

Niquice did not say whether this anomalous situation would continue. He said Frelimo “urges the relevant authorities to play their role. Nobody is above the law”.

He believed that the institutions of the administration of justice “will hold Renamo criminally responsible” for its acts of war.

Niquice also declined to give any Frelimo position on constitutional amendments and particularly on the question of whether provincial governors should be elected rather than appointed.

Earlier this week, a member of the Frelimo Central Committee, former information minister Teodato Hunguana, argued strongly for abandoning persistent vestiges of the one party state, and for the direct election of provincial governors.

Asked for an official Frelimo response to Hunguana, Niquice said “we respect pluralism of opinion”.

He said Frelimo has a team headed by Nyusi himself looking into questions of decentralisation. Questions such as those raised by Hunguana “will have to be debated within the relevant forums”.

Source: AIM