Maputo — Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, announced on Thursday that it is no longer supporting the current mayor of the central city of Beira, Daviz Simango, for a second term of office.

Instead, the Renamo candidate in Beira, in the municipal elections scheduled for 19 November, will be prominent Renamo parliamentarian Manuel Pereira.

The decision was taken at a Thursday meeting in Maputo of the Renamo Political Commission (of which Pererira is a member), and confirmed to the media by Renamo spokesperson Fernando Mazanga. He told reporters that Renamo had dropped Simango after pressure from "the party's grass roots in Beira".

But interviewed by the private television station STV, Pereira said that it was Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama himself who had decided he should stand.

This is a remarkable volte-face. Just three weeks ago, on 8 August, Dhlakama publicly announced that Renamo would run all five mayors elected on the Renamo ticket in the 2003 local elections (in Beira, Marromeu, Nacala, Angoche, and Mozambique Island) for a second term of office.

Pereira had already been lobbying to become the Renamo candidate in Beira, but was slapped down by Dhlakama. He publicly withdrew his candidature and pledged his loyalty to Simango.

Now the positions of three weeks ago have been turned on their heads, even though Simango is far and away the most effective opposition municipal politician. His work in Beira even won praise last year from President Armando Guebuza (though this may, of course, have condemned him in the eyes of the more sectarian wing of Renamo).

One of the accusations sometimes thrown against Simango is that he does not come from Renamo at all but from the National Convention Party (PCN), one of the minor parties in the Renamo-Electoral Union coalition. But nowadays the PCN has no life of its own, and has effectively merged into Renamo. Mazanga told reporters that Simango holds a Renamo membership card.

There is an eerie parallel between Renamo's behaviour towards Simango, and the decision of the ruling Frelimo Party, less than a week earlier, to dump the mayor of Maputo, Eneas Comiche, adopting the Minister of Youth and Sport, David Simango (no relation of the Beira Simango) as its candidate instead.

Both Comiche and Simango won praise, and international prizes, for their professional management of their respective cities. Both had expressed every intention of standing for a second term, and were the obvious, natural candidates of their parties. And both were discarded by their parties for the same reason - alleged pressure from "the grass roots".

But Frelimo at least went through a nomination procedure, ending with a formal vote at an extraordinary meeting of the party's Maputo City Committee where Comiche lost by 53 votes to 25. In Renamo there was no vote, just a decision by Dhlakama.

A second difference is that Renamo is not as disciplined a party as Frelimo, and the Renamo leadership is having some difficulty in selling the change of candidate in Beira. When the Renamo Sofala provincial delegate, Fernando Mbararano, told a Beira press conference on Thursday that Pereira was now the candidate, he claimed this followed broad consultation among Renamo members.

"We were forced to find a consensual candidate", Mbararano said, "We had not been consulted to indicate our candidate for the Sofala municipalities, particularly for Beira. That has only happened now. We went to the grass roots and found that they want Manuel Pereira to be their candidate".

This led to angry scenes at the Renamo Beira offices. That afternoon, according to STV, Renamo members opposed to the decision stormed into the offices and demanded Mbararano tell them exactly who these "grass roots" he mentioned are.

They did not believe there had been any consultation at all. When they demanded that Mbararano show them just one person who had wanted Pereira rather than Simango as the mayoral candidate, he was unable to do so.

It is now possible that Simango may run as an independent - although he only has a week to obtain the necessary paperwork, including the supporting signatures of at least one per cent of the Beira registered electorate.

The Renamo disarray will certainly delight Frelimo, which can now see a realistic chance of its candidate, the party's first secretary in Sofala, Lourenco Bulha, winning the election in November.