via Frelimo urges RENAMO to accept Nyusi’s invitation – The Zimbabwean 20/12/2015
Maputo – The head of the parliamentary group of Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo Party, Margarida Talapa, on Thursday urged the parliamentary deputies of the former rebel movement Renamo to persuade their party’s leader, Afonso Dhlakama, to accept the invitation for face-to-face talks with President Filipe Nyusi.
Nyusi has repeatedly made it clear that he is willing to speak to Dhlakama, and issued a formal invitation to the Renamo leader in early August. Dhlakama flatly rejected that invitation, and later in the month unilaterally suspended the dialogue between Renamo and the government that had been under way since April 2013.
During his State of the Nation address, delivered to the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic on Wednesday, Nyusi repeated his willingness to meet with Dhlakama “to discuss matters concerning the maintenance of effective peace”.
Speaking at the closing session of this sitting of the Assembly, Talapa urged Renamo to accept the President’s offer. She repeated Nyusi’s words that “to discuss the development of Mozambique, we should understand that good ideas do not have political party colours”.
She also urged Renamo “to hand over the guns in its possession”, and allow the members of its illegal militia “to be reintegrated in their communities, and benefit from the opportunities that the Peace and Reconciliation Fund opens for them”.
“To achieve and maintain effective peace”, Talapa argued, “we must all commit ourselves to the continual promotion of frank and honest dialogue so as to overcome our differences and build consensus around the fundamental questions of the country’s development, always putting the interests of the people above any individual or group interests”.
But dialogue could not be held “with arrogance”, she warned. Instead it required “humility, without any impositions or preconceptions”. To undertake a real dialogue “it is necessary to know how to listen and to accept that we may be wrong”.
“Patience and tolerance are able to turn the world into a peaceful place, one where life is more agreeable”, Talapa said.
She denounced the insults that some Renamo deputies had hurled at veterans of the national liberation struggle. These showed “total lack of respect for the sweat, blood and tears of the country’s finest children, who faced and defeated Portuguese colonialism and built this free and sovereign nation”.
The head of the Renamo parliamentary group, Ivone Soares, showed no interest in dialogue, and called for the downfall of the Frelimo government, although she added that this should not involve any violence. “Our objective is to finish Frelimo off through democratic means, and so we will never seize power by force”, she said.
She claimed that the country’s current problems were “a punishment from God for the leaders of Frelimo” which she described as an “accursed party”, that had impoverished the people. “To do away with poverty, the people must do away with Frelimo”, Soares declared.
She promised that Renamo would “end the curse of history, by removing Frelimo from power”.
Repeatedly Soares claimed that Frelimo had never won any elections, and kept itself in power by “stealing votes” – the standard Renamo explanation for recent Mozambican history, which is not supported by the reports from any of the domestic or foreign election observation missions.
Soares made a list of promises of the various marvelous things that would happen in Mozambique under a Renamo government, ranging from “low taxes”, to “respect for professional and technical competence”, “relentless and open struggle against corruption”, “water supplies for everyone” and “an effective and efficient public administration”.
Talapa remarked that Soares seemed to have plagiarized this list from the government’s five year programme which the Assembly had approved earlier in the year.
Lutero Simango, leader of the third parliamentary group, that of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), declared “we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of being divided on secondary matters. We have to concentrate on what is essential, and not scatter our efforts on contradictory actions”.
People should not be discarded, since “we will all be necessary. But to make a necessarily collective effort effective, we must know how to maintain stability and security, which are vital values in democratic life”.
He denounced the way in which the MDM had been excluded from all the outside bodies to which the Assembly appoints members. At this sitting, the Assembly elected its members to the Council of State (a body that advises the President), the National Defence and Security Council, the Higher Mass Media Council, and the National Human Rights Council. The positions were divided between Frelimo and Renamo and not one of them went to the MDM, on the grounds that, with only 17 deputies, the MDM group was just not large enough to choose a member for any outside body.
Simango said the Assembly “shirked its noble responsibilities of being an example of convergence, inclusion and constructive engagement”, and still maintained “the modus operandi of a two party system”, although there were now three parliamentary groups.
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