4 December 2007
Maputo — The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Tuesday approved its own budget for 2008, against the opposition of the former rebel movement Renamo, which wanted more state funding for the deputies.
The total budget is 405.7 million meticais (about 16.6 million US dollars). Running costs account for the vast bulk of this - 391.7 million meticais - while the Assembly's capital budget is only 14 million meticais.
Once again the Assembly's budget declined to reveal how much a deputy earns. Although the deputies are only part time, and although many have other jobs, they are paid a monthly wage, but the public is not told what it is.
In the mid-1990s, in the early years of the multi-party parliament, there was no such reticence. Then the Assembly's budgets detailed the wages of deputies and the various subsidies to which they were entitled. These documents also showed how much the various commission members earned (which was substantially more than the remuneration paid to deputies who did not sit on commissions).
An observer would scan the budget passed on Tuesday in vain for an item entitled "Deputies' remuneration". The money paid to deputies is instead coyly labelled "other expenses", and it amounts to 210.2 million meticais, or 51.8 per cent of the total budget. The Assembly must be the only body in the country which dares pass a budget in which the largest item of expenditure is simply labelled "others".
Since there are 250 deputies, it is easy to calculate that, on average, they each earn 840,655 meticais a year - which is a monthly remuneration of 70,055 meticais (2,859 US dollars). This is over 42 times the statutory minimum industrial wage of 1,645 meticais a month.
Yet it is far from enough for Renamo. There were calls from Renamo deputies for the state to provide them with scholarships, for the state to pay the insurance on their personal vehicles, and for rent subsidies.
Ismael Mussa claimed that such subsidies were being paid to members of the Assembly's governing board, its standing Commission. Complaining that when deputies from the provinces come to Maputo for parliamentary sittings, they live in "deplorable conditions", Mussa demanded that rent subsidies "should be for everyone or for nobody".
The first deputy chairperson of the Assembly, Veronica Macamo, who presented the budget, said the rent subsidy proposal was not yet in effect, and she was quite happy to accept Mussa's proposal that there should be no rent subsidies for anybody.
Parliamentary chairperson Eduardo Mulembue backed her up - although there had been calls in the past for special treatment for Standing Commission members, he was prepared to forego rent subsidies, subsidies for water and electricity bills and payments for their domestic servants.
Nonetheless Mussa insisted that the budget, and its accompanying plan for the Assembly's activities for 2008, should be referred back to the Standing Commission. The majority Frelimo Party voted down this proposal by 147 votes to 76.
Giving the Renamo "declaration of vote", Jose Manteigas claimed he could see inside the Frelimo deputies' heads. They really supported the Renamo proposals, he said, "but they can't say anything because of the lack of democracy inside the Frelimo parliamentary group". He demanded that the Frelimo deputies "stop being cowards".
For Frelimo, Isau Menezes retorted "We feel that this programme of activities shows institutional growth, allowing the bodies of this house increasingly to perform better. Frelimo is not a group committed to obstruction".
The Assembly then passed the plan of activities and the budget by the same margin of 147 Frelimo votes to 76 Renamo ones.
Defending the Renamo opposition, Maria Ines Martins claimed the budget did not contain enough funds "to allow the Assembly to monitor the government. It does not allow the Assembly to function with all the conditions required of a sovereign body".
She claimed that the budget had been imposed by the government and reduced the Assembly "to a department of the Finance Ministry'.
Moreira Vasco of Frelimo retorted that the Renamo deputies were only interested in more money for themselves, and noted "Renamo says everything is OK when it's discussed in the commissions, but changes its mind on the floor of the plenary".
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