HOMOINE (Mozambique), June 24 – Mozambican Prime Minister Alberto Vaquina (photo) declared on Saturday that the government will ensure that municipal elections are held this year on the scheduled date of Nov 20, Mozambican news agency, AIM, reported.
Speaking at a rally in the town of Homoine, in the southern province of Inhambane, Vaquina said that only through elections can the democratic choice of the country’s leaders be guaranteed.
“The government will do everything to ensure that there are municipal elections this year, since this is the democratic way of choosing those who are to govern this country”, he pledged.
He recalled the threats made by the country’s main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, that it will make it impossible for Mozambicans to exercise their constitutional right to elect their leaders.
Ever since Renamo was defeated in the parliamentary votes on amended electoral legislation in mid-December, it has promised not only to boycott this year’s municipal elections and next year’s general elections, but also to sabotage them.
This is part of the context for Renamo’s threat last Wednesday to interrupt traffic on the main north-south highway in Sofala province, and along the Sena railway line between the Moatize coal basin and the port of Beira. On Friday, Renamo implemented its threat with ambushes on the road in which two people were killed.
“Now that we are advancing towards the elections, they have begun attacks, killing and injuring people”, said Vaquina.
Despite the Renamo violence, he stressed that the government continues to prioritise dialogue “so that the Mozambican people may live in harmony”. He added that the purpose of dialogue is not for each party to demonstrate its strength, but to know how to listen and to be listened to.
Replying to requests from his audience for immediate results from the current dialogue between the government and Renamo, Vaquina explained “what is happening is that while we are talking, they come and attack us”.
“We must maintain peace, so that our gains are not destroyed and so that we do not compromise the future of our children”, he said.
He recalled that Homoine had been the scene of one of the worst massacres during the war of destabilisation. It was here, on July 18, 1987, that Renamo massacred 424 people in the bloodiest single event in the war.
“We must not allow this to happen again”, declared Vaquina. “If people appear here, behaving in the same way as those who are killing in Sofala, they must be denounced, and invited to abandon the path of war, since war is no solution to development”.
– BERNAMA
