Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
19 June 2009
Maputo — The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Friday approved the parliamentary report and accounts for 2008.
While the report was uncontroversial, and passed unanimously, most deputies from the opposition Renamo-Electoral Union coalition abstained in the vote on the accounts. There was one noteworthy exception - Maria Moreno, former head of the Renamo parliamentary group, who was summarily sacked at the start of this Assembly sitting in early March, voted with the majority Frelimo Party in favour of the accounts.
Thus the account passed by 150 votes to zero, with 57 abstentions.
The accounts are remarkable because the largest single budget item is "Others". Out of a total budget of 468.8 million meticais (17.6 million US dollars), "others" accounts for 237.7 million - which is 50.7 per cent of the total.
"Others" is the coy way the Assembly has found to describe the money spent on the salaries and allowances of the deputies themselves. The separate budget line for "wages and remuneration" is not for the deputies at all, but for the Assembly's staff, and accounts for only 37.5 million meticais.
The Assembly's accounts were shorter, but more transparent, in the 1990s, when publicly available documents stated exactly how much was paid to members of the Assembly's governing board, the Standing Commission, to chairpersons, rapporteurs and members of working commissions, and to deputies who held no special position.
That level of detail has now disappeared, at least from the documents that were publicly distributed. From the accounts, it is only possible to calculate that, on average, each deputy receives 79,547 meticais (2,990 US dollars) a month.
Introducing the accounts, Standing Commission member Mateus Katupha made clear that towards the end of 2008 the Assembly had run out of money. Expenditure in the second half of December on the Assembly's water, electricity and telephone bills, on fuel and lubricants, and on domestic air tickets (to fly deputies back to the province at the end of the October-December sitting), will have to come out of the 2009 budget.
Katupha also suggested that in revising the legislation on the Assembly's own procedures, changes should be made so that the accounts are analysed by the Administrative Tribunal, the body that checks the legality of public expenditure, before they come to the Assembly plenary, rather than the other way round, as happens now.
The debate on the Assembly floor was lacklustre. Renamo deputy Antonio Muchanga repeatedly raised the minor issue of letters which Renamo had supposedly sent to the Assembly chairman, Eduardo Mulembue, complaining against the behaviour of Alfredo Gamito, the Frelimo chair of the Working Commission on Agriculture, Regional Development, Public Administration and Local Power. Mulembue replied that he could recall ever receiving such letters.
A second Renamo deputy, Luis Gouveia, demanded that the Assembly be given autonomous medical care, outside of the national health service. The Assembly should have "a specialist medical board", he said, "so that we are not humiliated by the Ministry of Health because we are the wrong political colour". He did not cite any case of Renamo members suffering discrimination at the hands of Mozambican doctors or nurses.
As for the state of the Assembly's equipment, the deputy parliamentary chairperson, Veronica Macamo, promised that an electronic voting system would be installed in August.
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