Venancio Mondlane “unconditionally supports” Renamo – AIM report

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Venancio Mondlane “unconditionally supports” Renamo – AIM report

6:19 CAT | 19 Sep 2018

Mondlane participated in a debate yesterday at the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation- Mozambique organised by the “Young Leaders of Mozambique” platform to which all heads of list for Maputo were invited. Photo: Twitter / @Fes_Mozambique

Despite being disqualified from standing for Mayor of Maputo, Venancio Mondlane on Tuesday declared his “unconditional support” for the election campaign of the main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo.

Mondlane once showed the same enthusiasm for another party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), and it was on the MDM’s ticket that he was elected to the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, in the general elections of 2014.

He switched his allegiance from the MDM to Renamo in June, much to the annoyance of the MDM membership in Maputo, who twice voted unanimously to propose Mondlane as the MDM candidate for mayor of Maputo in the municipal elections scheduled for 10 October.

Renamo immediately put Mondlane at the head of its list of candidates for the Maputo Municipal Assembly. Under new legislation on municipal elections the head of the list of the winning party or group automatically becomes mayor.

But the National Elections Commission (CNE) disqualified Mondlane, and two appeals by Renamo were rejected by the Constitutional Council, the highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law. The Council’s second ruling on the matter was published on Tuesday morning.

Speaking to reporters in Maputo at a debate on “the deepening of democracy”, organised by the “Young Leaders of Mozambique” platform, Mondlane declared “My position as the same as I have said before – regardless of the decision taken by the Constitutional Council, I shall remain as a fundamental piece in Renamo’s campaign in Maputo city, and I shall continue to do my utmost so that my party is elected”.

Os cabeça de lista/ representantes, já preparados para debater com os jovens. Os jovens irão apresentar os seus desafios e soluções pic.twitter.com/L3mSooIVTl

— FES Mozambique (@Fes_Mozambique) September 18, 2018

He said he had not yet had time to read the latest Constitutional Council ruling in depth, but the only thing he had to say to Mozambicans, and to the citizens of Maputo in particular, was “vote for Renamo”.

With the fervour of a true convert, Mondlane declared his commitment to the cause of his new party, and urged all Maputo voters to look upon Renamo as “the true political alternative” to run the capital for the next five years.

He told “the people who believed in me, who believed in my ideals, in my manifesto, that this manifesto and these ideals are Renamo’s”. But in fact no political party has yet published any manifesto for the municipal elections.

“Renamo is my cause, Renamo is my family, Renamo is my future”, he declared. “It doesn’t matter what rulings may come from judicial fascism and from the sectarian political party fundamentalism that is kidnapping the country”. He thus forgot that one of the supposed “fascists” on the Constitutional Council, and who voted twice in favour of his disqualification, is Manuel Franque, who was appointed by Renamo.

Mondlane urged all other parties and organisations excluded from the elections “to take the opportunity to join the only organisation which has real capacity to change Maputo and rescue a city that has been forgotten for more than 40 years”.

Source: AIM