Venâncio Mondlane, head of list and the candidate for Mayor of Maputo in last year’s municipal elections, and member of parliament for Mozambique’s main opposition party Renamo, has said that he will appeal last week’s reversion by a Maputo court of an injunction request he had requested.
Mondlane has asked the court to issue a restraining order against Renamo leader Ossufo Momade from taking any actions in the party seeing that his term had ended on 17 January, and does any actions illegitimate.
According to Mondlane, because he had been elected in January 2019 for a five-year term, Momade was supposed to have fixed a date for a congress by 17 January, and thus any action he had taken after the date was illegitimate. Initially the court had agreed with Mondlane, suspending all the actions Momade had taken since then and restraining him from taking any further actions and forcing Renamo to hold its elective congress.
However, last week the court reversed the earlier decision, arguing that Momade’s actions were “structuring acts” he had carried out during the term of office of the Renamo bodies elected in the 2019 congress.
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Observers point out that there is a strong possibility that the judge might have suffered political pressure to revert his initial ruling awarding Mondlane an injunction, and forcing Momade to fix a date for the congress.
The new decision clearly places Mondlane at a disadvantage because it is likely that Momade will start from a vantage point as he hand-picked the congress delegates.
The decision helps Momade to maintain the status quo, meaning that he will shore up his position within the party, and block the rise of a leader with no commitment with the ruling Frelimo party and the establishment – a non-compromised leader could be in a better position to pressure Frelimo should the 2024 general and presidential elections be rigged as happened in the 2023 municipal elections.
Mondlane believes that Momade was bought by Frelimo because his challenge of the electoral results in Maputo City, Matola, Nampula, Nacala and other municipalities were Renamo won was surprisingly timid at best.
Both Renamo and Frelimo are going through unprecedented crises with the power holders being contested by internal groups demanding a change of direction. “These are the signs of time. The youth is clamouring for space,” said a political analyst.
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