MOZAMBIQUE 243 News reports & clippings1 March 2014 Editor: Joseph Hanlon ( [email protected]) Subscription links have changed: To subscribe: tinyurl/sub-moz To unsubscribe: tinyurl/unsub-moz Previous newsletters and other Mozambique material are posted on tinyurl/mozamb and bit.ly/mozamb Also in this issue: Election machine to be highly politicised Filipe Nyussi to be Frelimo presidential candidate Defence Minister Filipe Nyussi was selected tonight by the Frelimo Central Committee as its presidential candidate for the 15 October national election. After repeated criticism, Filipe Paunde resigned as party secretary-general. Paude and the party Political Commission tried to restrict the list of possible candidates to three allied to current President Armando Guebuza: Prime Minister Alberto Vaquina, Agriculture Minister Jose Pacheco and Nyussi. An old guard anti-Guebuza campaign led by Graca Machel and Joaquim Chissano, forced two former prime ministers onto the list, Luisa Diogo and Aires Ali. In an impassioned speech, Graca Machel also forced Guebuza to allow former members of the Political Commission who are no longer on the Central Committee, including former President Chissano, to attend and speak (but not vote). (Contrary to earlier reports, Eduardo Mulembwe did not stand.) In the first round tonight, Nyussi gained 46% and Diogo 23%. In a second round between those two, Nyussi was selected, with 135 votes (68%) against 61 (31%) for Diogo. Filipe Nyussi is Macondi and was born 9 February 1959, in Namaua, Mueda, Cabo Delgado. He was the only one of the candidates to have a liberation war link, having attended the Frelimo school in Tunduru, Tanzania before independence. He was a surprise appointment as Defence Minister in 2008. He completed his Mechanical Engineering degree at the Military Academy in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1990, just before the end of socialism. He joined the northern railways Caminhos de Ferro de Mocambique (CFM) in 1992 as assistant head of maintenance, moving up to be executive director 1995-2007. President Armando Guebuza has always had business links in ports and transport, dating from his time as transport minister 1986-90, so it is likely that Guebuza came to know Nyussi in this way. Unlike Guebuza, Nyussi is not a businessman; his only recorded business interest dates back to his time in CFM when he became one of many owners of a stevedoring company, SOMOESTIVA - Sociedade Mocambicana de Estiva. Indeed, during his campaign for the position, in January in Inhambane, he was applauded for a call for redistribution of wealth through the tax system and for increasing productive investment (CanalMoz, 12 Jan 14). Of the five possible candidates, Nyussi is the least known nationally and within the party. The spelling of the candidates name is not consistent, sometimes Nyussi and sometimes Nyusi, even in official documents. Election machine to be highly politicised Frelimo caved in almost completely to opposition demands to put tens of thousands of political appointees into the electoral process. Partly this was the result of recent government-Renamo negotiations, and are changes which could have been offered to Renamo many months ago, and which have now been pushed through parliament in haste. It appears that after MDM did well in local elections, both Frelimo and Renamo realised it was important that Renamo was back in the electoral process. So Frelimo offered more than it was willing to put on the table before, while Renamo accepted less than the veto power over the electoral process it had demanded. As soon as we have final texts of the revised laws, we will published a Mozambique Political Process Bulletin with details of the changes. Information here is from AIM reports of parliament sessions during the week. Polling station staff: For the first time in a Mozambican election, polling stations will now have party-nominated staff. Current and most previous laws say each polling station has five staff (chair, deputy chair, secretary and 2 scrutineers) recruited by STAE from public applications. Unexpectedly, MDM proposed four recruited staff and 3 party nominees, 1 Frelimo, 1 Renamo, 1 MDM. MDM expected this to go to a vote and be rejected, but Frelimo accepted and it did not go to a vote. There will be 13,000-14,000 polling stations, which means up to 42,000 political appointees. Parties have always had party delegates in polling stations, who observe and could file protests, but never nominated staff. Election commissions: Renamo has boycotted the electoral process until now, and it did not take up its seats on elections commissions. The means the civil society members of the commissions were chosen by the Frelimo majority, and tend to be Frelimo-aligned, Renamos main goal was to reverse that. The current 13-member National Elections Commission has 5 Frelimo Party, 2 Renamo (still vacant), 1 MDM, 3 civil society, and 2 legal figures, a magistrate and a pubic prosecutor. The new CNE will have 17 members, 5 Frelimo and 1 MDM (unchanged), 4 Renamo (up from 2), and 7 civil society (up from 3). The two legal figures are dropped. Renamo assumes it was have the right to name two of the new civil society. There will also be two new deputy presidents, one Frelimo and one Renamo, but not MDM. As part of an informal deal, Moslem cleric Sheik Abdul Carimo remains president (chair). At provincial and district levels, elections commissions now have 11 members: 3 Frelimo, 2 Renamo, 1 MDM and 5 civil society. Initially Renamo proposed to remove 2 civil society, but could not figure out how to do it. A special session Saturday 22 February was delayed all day while Renamo MPs consulted higher officials, and it finally proposed to add 4 civil society members, bringing the total to 9 and the commission membership to 15. This has been accepted. STAE (Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat): National STAE has a director-general and three department directors - organisation, training, and administration & finance. There will now be 26 additional political appointments: two deputy-director generals (1 Frelimo,1 Renamo, no MDM), six deputy department directors (3 Frelimo, 2 Renamo, 1 MDM) and 18 other politically appointed staff (9 Frelimo, 8 Renamo, 1 MDM). At province, district and city there will be the same 8 high figures - 2 deputy directors and 6 deputy department heads, and 6 further politically appointed staff (3 Frelimo, 2 Renamo, 1 MDM). AIM estimates at total of 2,312 political appointees in STAE. COMMENT: This is a recipe for confusion, confrontation, and increased fraud, and Frelimo will be the main beneficiary. Renamos main interest is simply paid jobs for its members. But Renamo president Afonso Dhlakama and the rest of the leadership have always believed that the more people they have, the easier it is to spot fraud. In fact, the opposite is true - the more people who are around, the easier it is to divert attention while fraud is committed. A third issue is that Renamo wants to be inside in order to make secret political deals. Both Frelimo and Renamo are concerned about the MDM, the new and more successful political opposition. Frelimo has been happy with a weak Renamo as opposition while Renamo is worried about votes lost to MDM, so both are happy to gang up against MDM (and will probably do so in polling stations and in STAEs). Indeed, the restructuring at all levels is designed to marginalise and weaken MDM. As the newest party with the weakest national organisation, MDM will be hard pressed to find nearly 15,000 members to fill all these posts - and these will be important potential campaigners lost to electoral administration at a critical time. Frelimo, with a large and well-oiled party machine, can make the best use of these changes. For example, there were complaints in Zambezia during local elections of Frelimo party people going to talk to - and apparently give instructions to - individuals on the polling station staff. Now that there is a formal nominated person, the party will exert even more control over their member on the polling station table (mesa). MDM and Renamo cannot match that degree of organisation. So Frelimo gains by having the best political machine to take advantage of the new arrangement, by marginalising and weakening the opposition it most fears (MDM) and by boosting the weak and safe opposition (Renamo). jh ================================================================ MOZAMBIQUE 242News reports & clippings26 February 2014 Guebuza losing power in presidential battle Few people are willing to predict the outcome of the Frelimo Central Committee meeting, which opens tomorrow and is expected to choose Frelimos presidential candidate. The meeting runs until Sunday 2 March at the party school in Matola. The constitution has a two-term limit so President Armando Guebuza cannot stand again. But he organised to have himself elected president of Frelimo in order to control the choice of his successor. Party secretary-general Filipe Paunde is a Guebuza loyalist, and at the party Congress in September 2012 a Political Commission sympathetic to Guebuza was elected. But growing opposition inside the party means Guebuza may not succeed. Frelimo always maintains a united face to the outside and will support whomever is chosen as candidate. But there are bitter struggles inside. The constitution at the time would have allowed Joaquim Chissano to stand again in 2004, but Guebuza organised an internal rebellion and was named the presidential candidate. History now repeats itself, with Chissano becoming the focus of opposition to Guebuza. Graca Machel is also said to be helping organise the anti-Guebuza campaign. Chissano was replaced because it was said that under his leadership the party elite had become corrupt, self-interest dominated over national interest, and Chissano had done badly in the 1999 national election. Exactly the same is being said about Guebuza now, with people also pointing to the unexpectedly good showing of the opposition in municipal elections last November. Guebuzas image has also been damaged by the confrontation with Renamo. The attempt to defeat Renamo guerrillas militarily has failed. Last week Frelimo ignominiously caved in almost completely to Renamo demands for changes to the electoral law, making concessions that could have been made a year ago. The Guebuza faction maneuverers began with the Political Commission choice of three pre-candidates, all Guebuza loyalists, to be presented to the Central Committee. They are Prime Minister Alberto Vaquina, Agriculture Minister Jose Pacheco and Defence Minister Filipe Nyussi. Frelimo secretary-general Paunde then made a public statement saying there was “no space” for further names. The response was a public campaign to say the Central Committee was free to make its own decisions and could not be controlled by Paunde. Meetings earlier this week of important party groups show the split. The Association of Veterans of the National Liberation Struggle (ACLLN) meeting last weekend called for Paunde and the entire secretariat to be replaced, and for more presidential candidates to be considered. The Veterans have a very strong role in the party - the include not only the old guard, but also the children of many of the key figures in Frelimo. But the daily O Pais reports this morning that in its meeting yesterday, the party youth wing (OJM) remained loyal to Guebuza, backing Paunde and the three pre-candidates. It appears that the opponents of Guebuza have chosen to start the fight by going after the party secretariat, and will try to replace Paunde - probably with their preferred presidential candidate, former prime minister Luisa Diogo. If this succeeds, she would be put forward as one of the pre-candidates. It will be close, with both sides counting votes, and with intense internal negotiations between the party elders. Many central committee members will hope that the party elephants will sort this out between them. But there will probably first have to been some procedural votes over the party secretariat and number of pre-candidates, to test the strength of the two sides. Guebuza wants one of his three pre-candidates, and probably will show no preference. His opponents want Luisa Diogo. There is palpable hostility between Guebuza on one side and Chissano and Diogo on the other. If the forces remain closely balanced, a likely compromise candidate is Eduardo Mulembwe, former speaker of parliament. Several other possible candidates have been running campaigns, including on Facebook, including Eneas Comiche, former mayor of Maputo; Aires Ali, former prime minister; and Tomas Salomao, former finance minister and former executive secretary of SADC. They are less likely as presidential candidates, but could become speaker of parliament or prime minister as part of the negotiations, as a way of ensuring regional balance. ================================================================= MOZAMBIQUE 241News reports & clippings12 February 2014 Renamo-government agreement on elections respite renewed fighting More opposition members on the National Elections Commission (CNE) and the politicisation of the electoral machinery were agreed in negotiations between Renamo and the government Monday and today. The opposition MDM has objected to not being part of the discussion. Meanwhile, there has been renewed fighting between Renamo and the government. On Monday, negotiators agreed to restructure the CNE, which now has 13 members - 5 Frelimo, 2 Renamo, 1 MDM, 3 civil society (including the chair), and two legal figures, a judge and a public prosecutor. Negotiators agreed to remove the two legal figures and add 6 more party figures. Numbers have not been publicly stated but there would probably be 7 Frelimo, 5 Renamo, 2 MDM and 3 civil society. As two of the civil society members of the CNE are close to Frelimo, this would maintain the Frelimo majority. Keeping the civil society members would maintain Sheik Abdul Carmio as chair (president) and allow the electoral process to continue, with registration starting Saturday 15 February and elections for president and national and provincial parliaments on 15 October. Negotiators today agreed to politicise the electoral administration technical secretariat STAE (Secretariado Tecnico de Administracao Eleitoral). STAE will now include deputy director-generals and deputy directors of each department appointed by the parties. Renamo hopes to present a bill to parliament this week that includes the agreed changes. Details of the changes to STAE still have to be worked out tomorrow. Parliament announced on 31 January that the next session would start Wednesday 19 February, two weeks early, clearly in anticipation of having to deal with the election law revision as the first item of business. Nothing has been said about possible change to the composition of provincial, district and city elections commissions and STAEs. Election commissions below the CNE currently have 11 members: 3 Frelimo, 2 Renamo, 1 MDM (which gives the opposition parity with Frelimo) plus 5 civil society. It is likely the parties will agree to similar changes to elections commissions and STAEs at all levels. Meanwhile, MDM president Daviz Simango yesterday objected to Frelimo and Renamo meeting in secret to change the electoral law, directly affecting MDM but without including MDM in the disucssion. It is an assault on democracy, he said. (Sources: O Pais, Noicias, AIM 11 and 12 Feb.) COMMENT: MDM did unexpectedly well in municipal elections, and Frelimo will be anxious to have Renamo back in the elections in order to divide the opposition. Renamo also needs to stand in this election because most of its funding comes from parliament members salaries, government grants based on parliamentary seats, and funding for this election. Another aspect is that there are 141 districts and 23 cities, each with their own election commission and STAE, plus 11 provinces with election commissions and STAEs. Each of these will probably have several Renamo posts. This gives the Renamo president hundreds of posts with salaries to give to supporters. And after 20 years as the opposition party, Renamo will have people in most districts to fill those posts. But this works against MDM, which is a newer party and which does not yet have members it can put into sinecures. MDM will need to find 1000 candidates and more than 10,000 polling station party agents. It also must organise its first genuinely national campaign. Therefore, to take several hundred competent people out of the campaign and put them into STAEs and election commissions will weaken the MDM. But Frelimo and Renamo will be happy to work together to weaken MDM. After STAE and election commission members in Zambezia blatantly tried to steal the election in Gurue, it would be hard to argue against the Renamo demand to have more people inside watching. Unfortunately, in the past large election commissions and politicised STAEs have proved to be slow and cumbersome, but Renamo was never able to use its position to prevent fraud. After the 2009 election the Constitutional Council demanded an entirely new election code, and civil society moved (with some support in Frelimo) to organise public hearings outside parliament to draft a new code, and which would have proposed a non-party CNE selected in open hearings, following the South African model. Inexplicably, the budget support donors rejected this, and the settlement of the early 2010 donor strike involved government agreeing to reject the Constitutional Council, ignore civil society, and go back to parliament not to draft a new code but simply to amend the existing contradictory electoral laws. Inevitably, the parties in parliament demanded places for their parties on the election commissions - although Frelimo did resist the politicisation of STAE. Embassies have short institutional memories, so it is important to remind the budget support donors that they created the environment for the present process by rejecting the only chance for non-partisan election commissions. jh Negotiations and mediators Last year neither side seemed particularly interested in negotiating or in a settlement. But MDM success in local elections and looming national elections spurred both sides. Renamo had been boycotting the talks, in part in reaction to government rigidity and formalism. But on 27 January Renamo returned to the talks; Frelimo agreed to accept five national mediators/observers and Renamo dropped demands for international mediation. CanalMoz reports that the two sides met in secret every day last week, including Saturday, in the parliament building, with some of the mediators present. They then returned to the official sessions in the Joaquim Chissano conference centre on Monday, with some of the mediators/observers present, and today, with all five, who are: + Dinis Sengulane, Anglican bishop. + Lourenco do Rosario, Vice-Chancellor of the Polytechnic University. + Padre Filipe Couto, the former Rector of Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) and founder and former Rector of the Catholic University. + Sheik Saide Abibo, Muslim cleric. and + Anastacio Chembele, minister of the United Methodist Church. CanalMoz also reports that the government rejected two Renamo proposals for mediators: Alicia Mabota, president of the Human Rights League, and Prof Gilles Cistac of UEM. Negotiations today took five hours and were only about the composition of STAE; they will continue discussing STAE tomorrow, Thursday. Shelling and attacks near Gorongosa Government today (Wednesday) confirmed that it has been using heavy artillery to shell Renamo positions near Gorongosa ince last Wednesday, but it denied bombing from aircraft. (AIM, @Verdade 12 Feb) Cristovao Chume, a national director in the Defence Ministry, said the shelling was really just a demonstration, to show Renamo that the army had power to mount a major military offensive. In effect he was admitting that heavy artillery is of little use against a guerrilla force, O Pais (11 Feb) notes that the Gorongosa mountain is in fact 17 different peaks surrounded by dense forest. O Pais (11 Feb) and STV report that the government military have occupied three former Renamo bases including Santungira, the former headquarters of Renamo head Afonso Dhlakama. Those bases are supplied by road from Gorongosa town. Renamo has attacked those supply convoys and bases on an almost daily basis, most recently killing 1 soldier and injuring 2 others on Friday. The shelling is a response. There was also a confrontation between Rename and government forces near Muxungue last Friday. Other news Attorney General Augusto Paulino said last week that he would prosecute electoral crimes. The Public Prosecutors office had been criticised for rarely following up even gross electoral offenses. (O Pais, 7 Feb) An air safety investigator sent by the US State Department to report on the aircraft crash that killed President Samora Machel in 1986, told AIM (4 Feb) that the South African apartheid regime did possess a mobile navigational beacon which could have been used to lure the plane away from its correct flight path. Alan E Diehl, an award winning aviation safety expert, now wants the United Nations or a similar international body to investigate the death of Samora Machel and his fellow victims, telling AIM: “this may well have been a crime against humanity and requires full disclosure. I hope that the US State Department will release my report to the investigating authorities”. Book review Stephen Emerson, The Battle for Mozambique, Pinetown, South Africa: 30 degrees South, and Solihull, England: Helion. This is a detailed military history of the 1977-92 war, based on interviews with participants and access to some archives. Author Stephen Emerson has a background in US military intelligence and the book is particularly good on Renamo and on Zimbabwean military involvement, but less good on Mozambique where he did not have access to archives or to senior military people.. As a journalist who covered the war, I find it interesting that although the book corrects many details, it also shows that much of what we knew or suspected at the time proves to be true. Emerson stresses that this was a cold war proxy war, and that Renamo was only created and survived because of the support of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. He provides new information on the Rhodesian creation of Renamo. He details the extensive command, logistic, supply and training support by South Africa, which at one point was airlifting 180 tonnes of material a year to Renamo, as well as substantial quantities carried by boats. There were South African training teams in Mozambique, and Renamo was supplied with a radio system more sophisticated than that used by the Zimbabwean and Mozambican government. By the late-1980s Afonso Dhlakama did command a large and surprisingly mobile military force, but it collapsed when South African support was withdrawn. Although the book stops at 1992, it gives important pointers on current issues. Emerson notes that Renamo insurgents have been blamed for much of the brutality unleashed against civilians during the war. And rightly so. Noting that successful guerrilla warfare is supposed to involve gaining the confidence of the peasants, he asks why there was such consistent and extreme brutality. He concludes, as many of us did at the time, that Renamos main goals were military - cutting lines of communication such as road and rail, damaging the economy, and the destruction of symbols of government power and presence, such as schools, health clinics, police stations, and Frelimo party offices. Emerson notes that as Renamo was purely a military force with no ideology driving it, it concentrated on military goals set by its South African sponsors rather than trying to gain popular support. Nearly all of its soldiers were initially kidnapped rather than joining voluntarily. There is an interesting discussion of South Africas misguided efforts to keep control of the political side of Renamo, which made it difficult for the Mozambicans to develop a national identity and become a party. Dhlakama was a good operational military commander, but with strategy largely coming from South Africa. He was not a politician and the Renamo was not about organising local support, so it was unable to evolve and never became a proper political party. jh ============================= Also on the web: Previous newsletters and other Mozambique material are posted on tinyurl/mozamb and bit.ly/mozamb ========================================================== This mailing is the personal responsibility of Joseph Hanlon, and does not necessarily represent the views of the Open University. -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Minfo mailing list [email protected] lists.uem.mz/mailman/listinfo/minfo
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 08:40:31 +0000
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