The Mozambican Frelimo ruling party has been unable to choose its flag bearer for the October 2024 presidential elections.

The current president, Filipe Nyusi, is set to step down in January 2025, when his second constitutional five-year term ends. As such, the party must choose a successor before the deadline for submission of candidatures comes due.

Meeting extraordinarily on Friday, in Matola, Frelimo’s Central Committee debated the shortlist the party’s Political Commission had submitted earlier in the afternoon. The names comprised current Frelimo Secretary-General, Roque Silva, Damião José, a member of the Political Commission, and Daniel Chapo, governor of the southern province of Inhambane.

However, the Central Committee proposed the shortlist be revisited to include new names. The Central Committee, the party’s highest body between congresses, managed to ram through two more names to the shortlist: Sources say that the two are Basílio Monteiro, a former Interior Minister during Nyusi’s first term, and Aires Aly, a former prime minister.

Allegedly, José and Chapo have been dropped from the shortlist.

However, because of heated arguments in the plenary, the Central Committee postponed any decision for Saturday.

Comment

Mozambique Insights understands that the shortlist the Political Commission submitted to the Central Committee was the only possible one members of the former body could countenance, after having refused to approve his Plan A shortlist comprising Amélia Muendane, member of the Political Commission and chairperson of the Tax Authority, Carlos Mesquita, Minister of Transport and Communications, and Celso Correia, also member of the Political Commission and Agriculture and Rural Development Minister, for a long time considered Nyusi’s dauphin.

Then, Nyusi proposed a new shortlist which was accepted by the Political Commission, and subsequently submitted to the full Central Committee.

It seems as if the Political Commission set Nyusi up for failure: Roque Silva, who is the strongest of the first shortlist, is not liked by the overwhelming number of the Central Committee. His reign as secretary-general has been marred by controversy; he has been known to be a dictator; and has shown little respect for party members. Consequently, observers doubt he would garner more than a dozen votes in the 253-strong body.

This means that any attempt to cling on to power even after his tenure has ended, would be unsuccessful, which is something he has been trying to avoid for a while. This stems from the fact that he set a precedent by giving the green light for the courts to prosecute and sentence former President Armando Guebuza’s son, Armando Ndambi Guebuza, and 10 other people on charges related to the $2.2 billion “hidden debts” scandal; and also, for throwing some of his comrades under the bus in crucial moments in the life of the party.

Hence, Nyusi fears that his comrades might decide to pay him back for his shenanigans.

That is the reason why Mozambique Insights understands that Nyusi and his clique might be spending the night seeking to strike a power-sharing deal with the two names proposed by the Central Committee.

Such a deal would have Nyusi continuing as chairperson of the party beyond his five-year term in 2027, leaving whoever wins the vote of the Central Committee and becomes the likely president of Mozambique at the helm of the state, which in practice would mean two sources of power.

This is something tried by Guebuza with no success. As such, it is not clear why Frelimo’s presidential candidate and probable Mozambican president would accept being hemmed in by Nyusi, who during his tenure refused to divide power with Guebuza.

Somebody who is not giving up is Correia, who is understood to claim to have the votes to carry him to the top – other candidates’ surrogates accuse him of buying votes from members of the Central Committee.

It remains to be seen whether having failed to be shortlisted via the Political Commission, will try to have his name on the ballot in Saturday’s session of the Central Committee. But Correia has a serious disadvantage: apart from being young (45), he is of mixed race.

Furthermore, the party’s old guard does not like him, claiming that he does not have an emotional link with liberation values.

Perhaps, he would be the only one to create a protective fortress around Nyusi.

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