2 November 2009
Maputo — Members and supporters of Mozambique's third largest political party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), on Friday vandalized the offices of their own party in the western city of Tete, according to a report in Monday's issue of the newsheet "Canal de Mocambique".
The protestors were MDM polling station monitors claiming that they had not been paid money promised by the MDM leadership, for the work they did on behalf of the party during last Wednesday's general elections.
"We want the food allowance promised by the president of the party (Daviz Simango) when he came here during the campaign", yelled the monitors.
They said they had gone without breakfast, lunch or dinner on polling day. They alleged that the MDM delegate in Tete, Celestino Bento, had promised that the allowance would be paid at the polling stations by an MDM delegation from Beira, which did not happen.
The claimed that Simango had promised to pay 3,500 meticais (about 127 US dollars) to each monitor, which sounds quite impossible. For this sum is considerably more than the statutory monthly minimum wage, and would be extraordinarily generous pay for one day's work.
There were 12,595 polling stations inside Mozambique. Had the MDM put one full monitor and one substitute in each of them, as it was entitled to, that would have, according to the Tete monitors' claims, cost the equivalent of 3.2 million dollars. It can confidently be stated that the MDM does not have that sort of money
Angered at what they regarded as "false promises", the monitors went on the rampage inside the office, breaking down doors and taking away tables and chairs.
"We are taking the chairs away as a form of protest", one of the monitors said. "If they don't pay us within a week, we shall sell these goods to get the money for our work".
Valy Ismael, the Tete city MDM political delegate, said Bento had given him 8,606 meticais to pay 60 of the 194 who worked in the city (which works out at 143 meticais each). But he claimed he only managed to pay 20 of them.
Valy tried to calm the monitors down, and eventually paid them 150 meticais each. Nonetheless they still walked off with some of the MDM office property.
Valy told reporters that the MDM headquarters sent a total of 76,000 meticais to the provincial delegation's account in two installments, to pay election expenditure, particularly the monitors' allowances. This amount is, of course, nowhere near enough to pay the extravagant sums the Tete monitors claim they were promised.
Thus the Tete MDM did not have party militants looking after its interests at the polling stations - it had mercenaries. And if mercenaries are not paid enough, they do not do their job properly.
This has been the bane of opposition parties since the first multi-party election in 1994. They do not have enough dedicated militants to safeguard the party's interests at the polling stations, and so they resort to hiring people, who often work poorly because they have no real interest in the body that is paying them.
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