SENIOR FRELIMO MEMBERS DENOUNCE VIOLATION OF STATUTES

Several senior members of Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo Party have signed a petition demanding that the Party’s disciplinary body, the Verification Commission, annul the current procedures to select the Frelimo candidate for the presidential elections scheduled for 15 October. The petition was published by the weekly “Magazine Independente” (MI), and is circulating widely on the Internet. MI withheld the names of the signatories, since more signatures are still being added.  Is aware that the signatories include some of the most significant names in Frelimo’s history. In December, the Frelimo Political Commission announced a short list of three names of possible presidential candidates – Prime Minister Alberto Vaquina, Agriculture Minister Jose Pacheco and Defence Minister Filipe Nyussi. This list was to be submitted to the Party’s Central Committee to make the definitive choice of candidate at a meeting to be held at the end of February.The Frelimo General Secretary, Filipe Paunde, declared at a press conference that this list of “pre-candidates” was final – no other names could be put forward. This month, in an entirely unprecedented move, Vaquina, Pacheco and Nyussi have been campaigning in the Party’s provincial committees – even though the provincial committees have no say in the choice of candidate, and do not mandate members of the Central Committee. The petitioners object to these procedures, and say that the Frelimo Statutes are being trampled upon. “Serious irregularities” had been deliberately committed, they warned, with potentially disastrous consequences.They were appealing to the Verification Commission “on the basis of the principle that this is a fundamental right of Frelimo members. We are convinced that remaining silent before the ruin to which some members are leading the Party is to become accomplices in this destruction”. 

“We are convinced that, in this difficult but determinant moment, the salvation and future of the Party lies in the responsibility of each member to take a clear position, resting on the principles of our Party, without any fear of damaging personal consequences”, they added.  They pointed out that the decision on the Frelimo presidential candidate must be taken by the Central Committee, and not by the Political Commission, which is a lower body, elected by the Central Committee. The Political Commission has the power to propose names – but these are only proposals and cannot bind the Central Committee, which is free to consider other names submitted by other Central Committee members.  “The statutes are clear”, says the petition. “They state that the decisions of higher bodies are binding on lower bodies. Not that the decisions of lower bodies are binding on higher ones”.  “It is the prerogative of the Central Committee to accept the proposals made to it, to reject them, or to consider any others, voting in full freedom”, it stresses. To claim that the Central Committee’s choice “is limited to the list proposed by the Political Commission means to invert the hierarchy, leading to the usurpation by lower bodies of the functions of higher ones”.

Furthermore the Political Commission should have made its proposals directly to the Central Committee instead of announcing them through the media. This violation of procedure, the signatories say, “is a serious violation of the dignity of the Central Committee, because it is this body, and only this body, which should receive the proposals at first hand”. A further serious breach of the Statutes, the signatories argue, is the campaigning under way in the provincial committees. This was “putting the cart before the horse”, the petition says. For if such debates were to take place in the provinces, they could only be authorised by the Central Committee.

“The Provincial Committees do not have the power to discuss matters that are within the power of the Central Committee, unless the latter decides that they may do so”, the signatories point out.  The Central Committee “is not a sum of the Provincial Committees”, and “there are no provincial members of the Central Committee”. Instead, its members are supposed to take the interests of the entire party into account.The intention behind this breach of procedure seemed to be to push the Central Committee in a particular direction “by confronting it with a fait accompli, invoking a remote controlled consensus”The signatories demand that the Verification Commission impose respect for the Party’s Statutes, thus ensuring that the Central Committee really is treated as the supreme Frelimo body in between Congresses, that the choice of Frelimo candidates for high office really does lie exclusively with the Central Committee, and that the proposals from the Political Commission really are proposals and not decisions. .Furthermore the Verification Commission should immediately end the debates in the provinces unless and until the Central Committee decides to the contrary. It should also instruct the provincial verification committees to check whether any form of pressure is being brought to bear on Central Committee members resident in the provinces, and take disciplinary action against any leading figures involved in such pressure. Since the chairperson of the Verification Commission, Jose Pacheco, is one of the three pre-candidates, the signatories say that, in order to avoid a conflict of interests, he should not take part in the meeting of the Commission that analyses their petition.The signatories also urge that the meeting of the Central Committee be brought forward “in order to bring an end to the usurpation of functions”.