Maputo — A man who claims to be on a mission from God, has set up a political party to run in the forthcoming general and provincial elections on a platform of abolishing the current secular constitution and turning Mozambique into "a religious society".

He is Jose Viana, the former president of the NGO Forum LINK, which practically collapsed under his leadership. On Wednesday, in the southern city of Matola, he launched his own party, the Union of Mozambican Democrats (UDM).

Viana told a press conference that the UDM would bring together all Mozambicans who feel damaged by the policies adopted by the government. This, he claimed, is a party under divine guidance, following the principles of "Almighty God".

"The Union of Democrats is not a union of political parties, but a union of the suffering people", he said, "such as the demobilised soldier who defended this country and has no reward, the veterans of the independence war who are compulsorily put on the reserve list, the private security guards who spend nights without any security of their own".

He claimed that people from such groups, feeling revolted by their situation, had encouraged him to form the UDM. "This means it is the revolt of the Mozambican people", he declared.

Viana himself is the UDM candidate for President of the Republic. He said he was certain to be elected, and would govern Mozambique for the next five years.

Asked how his election campaign would be financed, Viana brushed the question aside. Apparently messengers from God do not need to bother with such trifling matters as money.

"We aren't worried about financial support or carnal moral support", he said. "We have the due guidance of God. We have all the support we need which is the order and decision that come from God. We shall stand in the provincial elections, we shall stand in the parliamentary elections, and I shall be President of Mozambique as from next year, even without material support because all riches come from God, and the money that people own comes from God".

He promised to govern the country on the basis of divine guidance, and would abolish the constitutionally enshrined separation of church and state. Instead, he would turn Mozambique "into a religious country, in which Mozambicans fear God".

"This constitution we have will be banned, because it separates man from God, and that cannot be", he added.

He declared that the electoral bodies, the National Elections Commission (CNE) and its executive body, the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), will be dissolved, supposedly because most of their members work for the ruling Frelimo Party.

Oddly enough, Viana boasts that he is a member of Frelimo, and even showed reporters his Frelimo membership card. "I am a child of Frelimo", he said. "I am the son of a veteran of the liberation struggle. The UDM is a continuation of the ideals of Samora Machel and of Eduardo Mondlane. It is a replica of Frelimo".

But neither Mondlane, the founder of Frelimo, nor Machel, the country's first president, ever spoke of turning Mozambique into a theocracy.

AIM asked the Frelimo secretary for mobilization and propaganda, Edson Macuacua, what would happen to a party member such as Viana who created his own party and promised to stand against Frelimo in elections.

"It's very clear. He is automatically expelled from Frelimo", Macuacua replied. There was no need for any party disciplinary body to take a decision. "The most elementary duty of a Frelimo member is to support the party in elections", he added. "He loses all his rights as a party member".

Journalists asked Viana how many members the UDM has, and where its head office is located. "We have registered the members of our party and currently there are more than 20 million", he said. "We are represented throughout the country and our head office is in the hearts of all the Mozambican children of God suffering injustice". (The total Mozambican population, according to the 2007 population census, is 20.5 million).

As for his departure from LINK, Viana said he had left the forum because the civil society bodies who were its members had been corrupted by the government and by Frelimo.

In fact, Viana's autocratic style of leadership led to LINK losing some of its most significant members, including the Women's Forum (a network of organisations working for women's rights), the Southern African AIDS Trust (SAT), the Integrated Development Organisation (KULIMA), and the Organisation for Conflict Resolution (OREC).

These bodies resigned from LINK, accusing Viana of refusing to allow members of the Board of Directors to enter the LINK officer, or resorting to "defamation and slander" against his opponents, and "a total rejection of dialogue"

In 2007, the weekly paper "Magazine Independente" (MI) published a letter which Viana allegedly wrote to the General Director of the State intelligence and Security Service (SISE), Gregorio Leao, denouncing supposed "subversion" and links with opposition parties of various civil society organisations. Among his targets were KULIMA, and the man heading it, the well-known Italian activist Domenico Liuzzi, who was accused, without the slightest evidence, of channeling funds to the former rebel movement Renamo.

At the time Viana did not deny the authenticity of the latter. Today, he does not want to talk about it. "I'm not answering this", he told the reporters. "It's Frelimo that did this, and you (the journalists) know about the matter, and you were sent here to ask me about it".

Last year, when he was still head of LINK, Viana tried to submit a LINK slate of candidates for the municipal elections. The nomination papers were not in order, and the CNE rejected them.

The same fate could well befall him this year, since the requirements for presidential elections are much more stringent than for municipal ones. In particular, every presidential candidate must be supported by at least 10,000 notorised signatures of registered voters, and must also make a deposit of 100,000 meticais (about 3,760 US dollars).