26 December 2008
Maputo — Mozambique's ruling Frelimo Party won an overwhelming victory in the municipal elections held on 19 November, "because we prepared and we organised - we won the elections because we worked", declared the head of the Frelimo parliamentary group, Manuel Tome, on Friday,
Speaking at the closing session of the final 2008 sitting of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Tome' dismissed opposition claims of fraud in the local elections as mere fictions. The real problem of the former rebel movement Renamo, he suggested, was that they simply had not done the work necessary to win elections.
"Fraud is only in the heads of the bad losers, of those who did not prepare or organise, and thought they could win votes by manipulating public opinion and intimidating the voters", said Tome.
"That's why you are going to go on losing elections", he told the Renamo benches.
He scoffed at the Renamo claims of truckloads of phantom voters ferried in from outside the municipal boundaries to skew the results. "Those who lost the elections invented trucks of people from I don't know where coming to vote for Frelimo", Tome said. "We shouldn't be surprised if one day they say that the voters don't exist, and are a creation of Frelimo".
"You don't presume guilt, you prove it", he declared, above angry Renamo heckling. "And the burden of proof is on he who makes the accusation".
Frelimo candidates were elected mayor in 41 of the 43 municipalities, lost in one (Beira), and there must be a second round in the northern port of Nacala. Tome pointed out that in 12 municipalities Frelimo won over 90 per cent of the vote, and in 11 it took between 80 and 90 per cent of the vote. Such numbers, he said, were "eloquent tribute to the scale of the work done by Frelimo"
Dignified politicians, he added, "accept defeat and recognise when their adversaries have won". That was the case in Beira, where the Frelimo candidate, Lourenco Bulha, accepted he had lost to the incumbent mayor and former Renamo member, Daviz Simango.
Bulha's next reaction was to hold a session of the Sofala Provincial Committee of Frelimo "to discuss how to prepare victory in the 2009 provincial and general elections", said Tome. "That's how a serious party behaves, how real politicians behave".
Tome attacked the Renamo benches for walking out in the middle of the state of the nation address given by President Armando Guebuza on Wednesday. This was the behaviour of people "who have no self-esteem", he said.
Since the whole session was broadcast live on radio and television, the Mozambican people saw the Renamo boycott, and Tome was sure it would contribute towards "penalising Renamo in the 2009 elections".
Tome listed the main items in the government's Economic and Social Plan for 2009, which the Frelimo majority in the Assembly had approved on Tuesday. "Renamo voted against all these actions which seek to meet the needs of our people", he said. "Renamo is against the people".
Renamo had also voted against the state budget - which means they had voted against the wages of parliamentary deputies. "Yet at the end of the month they don't hesitate to collect those wages", said Tome. "They ought to be more consistent".
He warned Renamo that Frelimo has been preparing for the 2009 general elections ever since the results of the 2004 presidential and parliamentary elections were announced. "Our goal is to win and to win well", he said. "Our goal is to do better than we did in 2004, so that we capture a good number of the seats currently held by Renamo".
"We want to win the elections in order to continue leading our country successfully", Tome said, "so that with the efforts of each and every one of us we shall increasingly approach our great goal of making Mozambique a land of development and well-being for all"
Tome's opposite number on the Renamo benches, Maria Moreno, gave a speech that could not have been more different in tone and content. In contrast to Tome's confident and upbeat approach, Moreno gave a catalogue of bleakness and despair.
She began with her own defeat in the local elections, where she had stood for mayor in her home town of Cuamba, in the northern province of Niassa. "Because of the way that farce was handled, nobody doubts that today I and the people of Cuamba are sad because of this outcome", she said.
She attacked the law passed earlier in the day establishing a National Human Rights Commission, claiming that it would have "a very strong presence of the executive, which ruins the objective for which it was instituted" (in fact, the government , in the shape of the Prime Minister, appoints only three of the 11 members of the commission).
"Mozambique is still under the commands of a dictatorial regime", she claimed, "with a ferocious appetite for the control of all institutions".
Contrary to the optimistic view of Guebuza and Tome on the progress of Mozambique in the fight against poverty, she claimed "most Mozambican feel that the state of the nation is degrading".
"The real picture of the country is marked by hungry multitudes, unemployed multitudes, multitudes suffering from malaria and HIV/AIDS", Moreno declared. "The real country has multitudes of under-nourished people multitudes of beggars. In the real country, there is not enough money to pay school fees, to pay for clothing, tom pay for transport, to build a decent house. In the real country there are multitudes of elderly people and orphans cast into the deepest of miseries".
Moreno also attacked Frelimo for its silence over the current situation in Zimbabwe, a matter which Tome did not mention. "The people of Zimbabwe are suffering in an infamous fashion, and this complicit silence in no way dignifies us", she said.
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