Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Maputo (Agenzia Fides) - “The Mozambicans are coming to the polls calmly. The electoral campaign has been fairly tranquil, although there have been a few low-key incidents,” Agenzia Fides has been told by local Church sources in Mozambique, where today (October 28), nearly 10 million voters are electing a president and legislative and provincial leaders (see Fides 27/10/2009).
All the local and international commentators predict the victory of the FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front), the party that has been in power since 1975. The incumbent President and leader of the FRELIMO, Armando Guebuza, will very likely be voted back in. “In fact, the only two unknowns of the election is the voting participation rate and the percentage with which FRELIMO will take the vote,” Fides sources said. “As for the former, in Mozambique the previous elections have not had a very high rate of voter participation, probably due to the disappointment of large sectors of the voting public. This is why all the churches in the country and various organizations carried out a campaign to show the importance of voter participation. Yesterday evening, for example, the television aired an appeal to voters from Archbishop Francisco Chimono of Maputo.”
The Bishops also published a Pastoral Letter on the occasion of local elections in 2008, making a strong appeal to voters (see Fides 11/9/2008) and reiterated their statements in their final statement after their Plenary Assembly in April (see Fides 8/5/2009).
“The fatigue of the voters could be, in part, due to a certain disillusionment as FRELIMO continues to govern the country, since the mid-70s,” Fides sources explained. “It is a disillusionment that is even present amongst the party leaders, who fear they may not be able to gain absolute majority in Parliament. FRELIMO seeks to gain the majority so as to govern without entering into a coalition with other parties.”
“There are, however, new developments in comparison to the past,” our sources say. “The most relevant is the participation of the new political formation, the Mozambican Democratic Movement (MDC), formed by Davis Simango, Mayor of Beira, the second largest city in the nation. He is the son of one of the founders of FRELIMO, later killed in an internal conflict. Davis Simango was then involved in RENAMO (Mozambican National Resistance, the guerrilla group that fought a 20-year-long civil war against the FRELIMO government, later becoming the majority opposition party at the end of the conflict). Simango managed to become Mayor of Beira, presenting himself on the RENAMO ticket. Later, due to differences with the party leaders, Simango started the MDC.”
The MDC and other parties regret the exclusion of their candidates from various electoral precincts, for bureaucratic reasons. “According to the electoral commission, these parties did not present all the required documents to present their own candidates in various precincts. The parties suffering the consequences claim that the commission only represents FRELIMO and RENAMO, which have joined forces against the other political parties.”
“These facts, however, do not make us loose hope and do not eclipse the objective progress that has been made in the last 15 years, especially on an economic and social level,” Fides sources concluded. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 28/10/2009)
