via Renamo deputy boasts of impending coup – The Zimbabwean 17/03/2016
Maputo – Although so far there is so sign of the parallel government which Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the Mozambican rebel movement Renamo, promised to establish in six northern and central provinces in March, a prominent Renamo parliamentary deputy, Jose Manteigas, on Wednesday insisted that “Renamo will govern in the provinces where it won”.
Speaking in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, in the “period before the order of the day”, a period of up to an hour when deputies may make speeches on anything that is not on the order paper, Manteigas declared, repeatedly, “Renamo governance is coming”.
He did not explain how Renamo could possibly stage a coup d’etat in six provinces in a fortnight, but pledged the takeover would be “a peaceful transfer without violence”, and urged the ruling Frelimo Party to cooperate in the coup.
He made the standard Renamo claim that it had won every election since 1994, although not a single domestic or international observer mission backs up this claim. He even alleged that Renamo had won an absolute majority of parliamentary seats (166) in the October 2014 election, but produced no evidence.
Despite the threat to seize control of six provinces, Manteigas insisted “Renamo has no plan to divide the country”.
His speech was met with rapturous applause from the Renamo benches, but the Frelimo deputies regarded it as an assault against the Mozambican state.
The spokesperson for the Frelimo parliamentary group, Edmundo Galiza-Matos Junior, told AIM “We feel indignant. We feel this is a provocation against a democratically established state. All Mozambicans should be indignant at this”.
But Galiza-Matos said Frelimo has no plans to ask for Manteigas’s parliamentary immunity to be lifted, so that he can be prosecuted for incitement to rebellion.
However a decision to prosecute really lies with Attorney-General Beatriz Buchili. Earlier in this parliamentary sitting several Frelimo deputies demanded that Buchili take measures against Renamo, for its armed action in the centre of the country, and the inflammatory speeches made from the parliamentary rostrum.
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