Formers Mozambican presidents Armando Guebuza and Joaquim Chissano have demanded that the ruling Frelimo party’s Central Committee meeting should end on Saturday with President Filipe Nyusi’s successor already known.
Barring any surprises, Nyusi will step down in January 2025, at the end of the constitutional second five-year term. As such, Frelimo needs to wrap up the succession process by electing its presidential nominee for the forthcoming October 2024 general and presidential elections.
However, Nyusi had until Thursday avoided addressing the issue, when Óscar Monteiro, a war veteran and a former State Administration minister, raised a point of order during the opening of the national conference of the Association of Veterans of the National Liberation Struggle (ACLLN), to demand that the elephant in the room be addressed.
“I would ask you, Mr President, for us not to leave these magnificent meetings without discussion the succession, especially because it’s too late and that could be damaging for the party,” said Monteiro.
This seems to have opened the floodgates, as on Friday morning ACLLN’s Secretary-General, Fernando Faustino, proposed what seems to be the profile of the person the war veterans want as Frelimo’s presidential nominee. “It must be someone with the ambition to win, with determination and with a holistic and integrated focus and vision of the economic policy of Mozambican society,” he said.
The eventual nominee must have a clean past and should have knowledge of Frelimo and its heroes, adding that “he must bring new solutions to the country’s challenges without destroying the gains that have already been made.”
However, Guebuza quickly quashed the idea of profiles. “I don’t need profiles. We know the people,” he said, adding that “to go for a profile is to run away from reality. The the ideal profile is in the Frelimo statutes.”
Eventually, Nyusi had no other choice than to admit that the issue of succession would be discussed. This was confirmed by Ludmila Maguni, Frelimo spokesperson, who told a press conference that the Central Committee will debate the issue of succession and will elect the party’s presidential nominee.
Comment
Nyusi has been playing his game. On the one hand, he gives signals that he will support José Pacheco, former Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Interior, and Agricultural minister, who last time when Frelimo had to elect Gueuza’s successor, threw his support behind Nyusi, after losing in the first round, and on the other, his informal spokespersons, journalist Gustavo Mavie, who argues that Frelimo needs to choose a woman, a not-subtle nod at Amélia Muendane, head of the Tax Authority, and Egídio Vaz, a historian who exalts Egyptian President Abel Fattah al-Sisi third term of office, at the same time that the name of war veteran Hama Thai is uttered in the same vein.
Clearly, the trend is that of Nyusi attempting to manipulate the succession process in his favour.
Why? First, Nyusi is terribly afraid of Guebuza; second, he is trying at all costs to find a candidate who can give him an immunity deal so that he is not persecuted after he steps down as he did Guebuza; and third, somehow his name is still implicated in the “hidden debt” scandal – the term “hidden debts” refers to loans obtained from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB Russia by three Mozambican companies, ProIndicus, EMATUM (Mozambique Tuna Company) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management), with the sole contractor and supplier, the Abu Dhabi-based group Privinvest, selling them fishing boats, radar stations and other assets.
Nyusi’s nervousness about discussing the succession can be explained by his desperation. Those close to his inner sanctum have been silent, perhaps playing the game behind the scenes. Only Emília Moiane, head of government’s press office, has spoken out against the independent press, with attempts at censorship, only stopped by Nyusi himself – the skeptics think this might have been choreographed.
As Guebuza said, the discussion of profiles is untimely, as it should be a bottom-up process because it’s an issue for the whole of Frelimo and not just the Central Committee – normally, the Central Committee presents the issue which is then discussed at the grassroots and society for a broader consensus. However, there is hardly any time for such discussions. Calls for discussion of profiles have a specific objective: to save the skin of Nyusi and his group.
Chissano and Guebuza seem to be gaining the upper hand and have insisted with success that the meeting should choose the party’s presidential nominee, especially after Samora Machel Jr, known as Samito, and Óscar Monteiro challenged Nyusi on the issue of succession.
It remains to be seen who that presidential nominee will be, and whether the person will not be yet another casting error like the case of the incumbent, judging by the facts that are coming to light or whether they are really a patriot, a nationalist and committed with the country’s interests, as is being shouted in some of the speeches heard in Matola.
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