RENAMO BOYCOTTS STATE OF NATION ADDRESS

For the third consecutive year, Mozambique’s main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, on Monday boycotted the State of the Nation address delivered by President Armando Guebuza, to the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic.Before Guebuza spoke, Renamo deputies attempted to raise a “prior question”, but since the Monday gathering was a solemn session called with just one point on the agenda, the State of the Nation Address, Assembly chairperson Veronica Macamo, refused to give them the floor.When Guebuza took the rostrum, all the Renamo deputies stood up and noisily abandoned the chamber.Outside, the spokesperson for the Renamo parliamentary group, Arnaldo Chalaua, justified the boycott on the grounds that Guebuza has not responded to allegations of drug trafficking contained in diplomatic cables from the US embassy, released by the whistle-blowing website, Wikileaks.The government has, in fact, responded to the cables, signed by the former US charge d’affaires in Maputo, Todd Chapman, by issuing a brief statement last week describing them as entirely false.This was not good enough for Renamo which demanded that the government should appear before the Assembly to answer allegations based on the old press cuttings and cocktail party gossip that Todd Chapman had diligently forwarded to Washington.In last week’s parliamentary debate which rejected the Renamo demand, former Prime Minister Luisa Diogo declared “We were elected to discuss matters of national interest. It is not our job to discuss material published in the papers, and based on opinions that have not been supported by their country of origin, and some of which have been denied”.Chalaua’s supposed concern at the narco-trafficking allegations in the Wikileaks cables would bear more weight, were it not for the fact that Renamo also boycotted the State of the Nation address in 2008 and 2009, long before anybody in Maputo had ever heard of Wikileaks.The excuses in those years were changes in the electoral laws, which Renamo blamed personally on Guebuza. A statement issued by Renamo in 2009 claimed that Guebuza had “eliminated democratic dialogue in the country” – though it is rather difficult to hold a dialogue with people who are forever boycotting meetings.At least Renamo did not repeat the performance it gave during the 2000 State of the Nation address, delivered by Guebuza’s predecessor, Joaquim Chissano. Then they had actively sabotaged the speech, chanting, banging on the tables, and trying to drown out Chissano’s voice.The sole result of Renamo’s absence from the chamber during Guebuza’s speech will be that all the Renamo deputies should lose a day’s parliamentary wages.