9 October 2008
Maputo — Mozambican Labour Minister Helena Taipo on Thursday accused the country's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, of plagiarism.
Speaking in the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, she pointed out that attacks by Renamo deputies the previous day against corruption in the National Social Security Institute (INSS) mostly derived, not from any detective work by Renamo, but from the report into the INSS by a Commission of Inquiry which she had set up, and which was published in June.
"The inquiry was held, the government received the report and published it", she said. "Taking other people's work and passing it off as your own is plagiarism. It is the Frelimo government that investigated this, published it, and has promised to correct the situation and punish those responsible".
The matter has not ended with the commission of inquiry. The General Inspectorate of Finance, Taipo said, is now going through the INS accounts, and checking all the relevant information.
One Renamo deputy had claimed on Wednesday that some pensioners were receiving only "70 to 90 meticais (less than four US dollars) a month" Taipo retorted that nobody on any INSS pension scheme was receiving such a derisory sum.
The current minimum pension is 1,284 meticais (about 53 US dollars) a month, which was an increase of 30 per cent on the 2007 figure.
Some opposition deputies also imagined that the INSS budget has something to do with the general state budget. In fact, the INSS is not funded out of taxation, but out of the contributions made by employers and workers, and by the institute's own investments. "The INSS operates through its own revenues, and it's not true that this budget is approved by parliament", said Taipo.
"Workers contribute to social security with their own money", she said. "So pensions are not any kind of charity, they're a right, and Frelimo will never abandon the pensioners".
Three types of pensions are paid - old age pensions, invalidity pensions, and survival pensions (to the families of workers who have died). Between 2004 and June 2008, 1.116 billion meticais (46.3 million dollars) was paid in pensions. Currently 25,106 people are drawing an INSS pension.
Renamo had queried the INSS investments, with some even suggesting that it was improper for the INSS to hold shares in other companies. Taipo replied that in fact 80 per cent of the INSS investments were in deposit accounts and high interest bearing government bonds. 20 per cent were holdings in companies and real estate. Clearly the government is not happy with some of these investments, since Taipo said it had urged the INSS to review its holdings "in order to improve the results".
Total INSS investments over the past four years amounted to 2.13 billion meticais, and there had been earnings from these investments of 518 million meticais. The holdings in companies that Renamo so disliked amounted to 210 million meticais from which the INSS earned dividends of 65 million meticais (31 per cent of the value of the shares). The investment in real estate was 316 million meticais, which over the same period provided the INSS with earnings of 38 million meticais. .
Taipo strongly rejected Renamo's criticism of the INSS decision to purchase shares in banks. The deputies who made these attacks were woefully out of date. In the smallest Mozambican bank, the BMI (Mercantile and Investment Bank), the INSS has been a shareholder right from the start. But it has now bought ought other shareholders, and is the majority shareholder, owning 66 per cent of the bank.
The management of the BMI "will be strongly influenced by the INSS - giving it greater dynamism, liquidity and intervention in the financial market, looking for returns on the capital invested", she said
Renamo deputy Antonio Muchanga had also denounced the INSS holding in the BDC (Commercial and Development Bank, which was acquired last year by the First National Bank of South Africa). But Muchanga got his figures wrong, and was scathingly corrected by Frelimo deputy Hermenegildo Gamito who was the founding chairperson of the BDC.
Muchanga's claim that the INSS invested "400,000 US dollars" in the BDC when it was set up in 2001 was quite untrue. The money invested was in meticais, and was equivalent to 205,000 dollars at the exchange rate of the time. It purchased 2.6 per cent of the BDC's shares,. More importantly, the INSS sold those shares five years later for a sum in euros, equivalent to 600,000 dollars, thus making a 200 per cent profit on the deal.
Unable to reply to Gamito's figures, Muchanga resorted to a personal slur, accusing him of ruining some of the many companies he has headed. Gamito replied in kind, publicly branding Muchanga as "a cattle thief".
The allegation that Muchanga once stole cattle in Gaza province has circulated for years in the Assembly, but this was the first time that a Frelimo deputy made the accusation publicly, in the plenary, to Muchanga's face. It will be interesting to see whether Muchanga will try to sue Gamito: under Mozambican legislation, parliamentary immunity is far from absolute, and deputies can be sued for defamation for statements made in the parliamentary chamber
Other Renamo deputies, quite unable to answer Taipo's defence of the INSS, struck out on wild tangents. Thus Manuel Lole claimed that, since the 1992 peace agreement, 300 Renamo offices have been burnt down, and over 600 Renamo militants murdered. He offered no evidence for these fantastic figures, nor any reason why they should be dragged into a debate on social security.
"Without Renamo, there is no peace, there is no democracy, there is no rule of law. Without Renamo parliament will disappear and journalists will be killed", Lole prophesied.
Luis Boavida made the extraordinary claim that prominent figures who have died over the past couple of decades - ranging from murdered journalist Carlos Cardoso, to former chief of staff Sebastiao Mabote (who drowned while on holiday), to former information minister Rafael Maguni (killed in a traffic accident), and even the country's first President, Samora Machel - would still be alive, if they had been members of Renamo. Any connection with the real world, let alone with the INSS, was hard to detect.
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