Maputo — One of the independent members of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Jose Lopes, has warned that the main opposition party, Renamo, plans to use physical violence to expel all five independent deputies from the Assembly.
The five have all either left, or been expelled from Renamo, but have kept their parliamentary seats. Renamo is demanding that they be thrown out of the Assembly, so that it can appoint more pliable people to replace them. But there is no legal basis for this demand - nothing in Mozambican law obliges a deputy to stop representing his voters merely because he has fallen out with the political party on whose ticket he was elected.
Cited in Saturday's issue of the daily paper "Noticias" Lopes said that another of the independents, Almeida Tambara, has been receiving anonymous threatening phone calls, which he regarded as attempts to intimidate him into giving up his seat.
Late last year unknown assailants attacked the home of a third Renamo dissident, Rashid Tayob. Lopes thought these men had been sent by the Renamo leadership in an attempt to frighten Tayob into resigning his seat.
Lopes alleged that former Renamo guerrillas are being recruited and trained for physical attacks against the five independents.
When "Noticias" asked Renamo spokesman Fernando Mazanga to comment on these accusations, he did not deny them. "Those seats are ours", he claimed. "And we shall do everything in our power to recover our property".
In December, a Renamo motion to throw the five dissidents out of the Assembly was defeated. Instead of accepting the majority vote, Renamo attempted to make it impossible for the Assembly plenary to function, by sabotaging the sound system, banging on the tables, chanting, whistling and behaving like demented rock stars rather than parliamentarians.
The head of the Renamo parliamentary group, Ossufo Quitine, interviewed by "Noticias", implied that this behaviour is likely to continue in 2003. "We envisage a year of struggle", he told the paper. "We are the Mozambique National Resistance. Our job is to resist these communists who now present themselves as democrats".
He blamed the majority Frelimo Party for the chaotic December scenes in the Assembly. He claimed that Frelimo had "enticed" the five dissidents to leave Renamo, a claim that has been denied both by the dissidents and by Frelimo.
Frelimo does not need the independents - with or without them, it already has a comfortable overall majority in the Assembly.
