Both the
ruling Frelimo Party and the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) on
Sunday launched their election campaigns for the 15 October general election in
the northern city of Nampula, capital of the largest of the 11 provincial
constituencies.Speaking at the Frelimo rally, President Armando Guebuza, in his
capacity as president of Frelimo, laid a heavy stress on the need to strengthen
national unity.“Mozambique is ours”, he declared. “This land belongs to all of us.
The roads are ours. The schools are ours. The hospitals are ours. Nobody can take them from
us”.The country could only continue to develop, Guebuza said, with the
commitment “of each and every one of its citizens”. Permanent dialogue between
the various forces in society, he continued, was crucial so that Mozambicans
can live together peacefully.Frelimo’s candidate to succeed Guebuza in the
Presidency, former defence minister Filipe Nyusi, declared that he has “a
programme of change and hope for Mozambicans”, adding that, if he became
President, he would bank on the development of agriculture, rather than on the
country’s mineral wealth. “You can’t eat coal and gas”, he said. “The
people don’t eat mineral resources”.Nyusi said he had travelled round the
country during the last six months listening to various sensitivities. “I have spoken with many people”,
he said. “My
programme is the fruit of the discussions I have held”. Less than a
kilometre away, the leader of the MDM and mayor of Beira, Daviz Simango, was
also launching his presidential campaign.At his initial rally, Simango declared
“we want a nation of inclusion, a nation of development, a nation of freedom, a
nation of justice and a nation of solidarity”.He claimed that, in the 39 years
of independence, Mozambicans remained poor, despite Frelimo’s slogans of the
fight against poverty. “They tell us stories of the fight against absolute poverty, but these
stories are continuing to fail”, he said. “What we see is a group of
Mozambicans with absolute wealth. And that is why the country is what we know
it as – increasing misery, our children sitting on the floor in schools, while
every day timber is leaving Mozambique”.
Simango called for greater independence
of the courts in order to fight corruption, and for a reduction in the powers
of the President to appoint key figures in the judiciary. Like Nyusi,
Simango too said he would prioritise agriculture, producing food to fight
hunger. He also wanted to promote mass enrolment into technical and
professional education “so that every Mozambican knows how to do something that
can sustain his family”. He urged his supporters to turn out en masse on
voting day, 15 October, to say “enough!” to what he regarded as 39 years of a
governance that had only brought “poverty and misery”.
Simango called for greater independence
of the courts in order to fight corruption, and for a reduction in the powers
of the President to appoint key figures in the judiciary. Like Nyusi,
Simango too said he would prioritise agriculture, producing food to fight
hunger. He also wanted to promote mass enrolment into technical and
professional education “so that every Mozambican knows how to do something that
can sustain his family”. He urged his supporters to turn out en masse on
voting day, 15 October, to say “enough!” to what he regarded as 39 years of a
governance that had only brought “poverty and misery”.
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