Party’s Power in Mozambique Is Criticized as a Barrier to Democracy

Antonio Silva/European Pressphoto

Supporters of the Mozambique Democratic Movement, a fledgling political party, distributed leaflets in Maputo this weekend.

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By BARRY BEARAK

Published: October 26, 2009

MAPUTO, Mozambique — There is a leftward lean to this seaside capital. The Urban Style Boutique sits at the corner of Ho Chi Minh and Vladimir Lenin. Avenida Mao Zedong dead-ends near a five-star hotel. Commercial banks count their money on Avenida Friedrich Engels.
But Mozambique’s fondness for Marxist street names has far outlasted its affection for any kind of Marxist vision. Indeed, this country is now a favorite of the West, one of Africa’s generously rewarded “donor darlings,” a place where governments and charitable groups annually dispense an estimated $2 billion. Foreign largess accounts for more than half of the national budget.
Darlings are not always so lovable, however, and in the past few months Mozambique has been deemed to fall short in a vital category on the donors’ scorecard: democracy. Elections will take place Wednesday, and many here think the governing party, Frelimo, has used back-room sleight-of-hand to keep a major opponent off the ballot in most of the country.
Todd C. Chapman, the acting chief of mission at the United States Embassy in Maputo, said in carefully chosen phraseology that Frelimo had “chosen not to take a step forward, and that’s regrettable.”
Salomão Moyana, one of Mozambique’s leading political commentators, was more straightforward. “The election process has been sabotaged,” he said flatly. “The international community is used to tolerating a certain amount of corruption from Frelimo, but this is a shocking event for them.”
A long, narrow landmass off the Indian Ocean, Mozambique has a population of 20 million and covers more territory than Texas; its coastline is longer than the Western seaboard of the continental United States.
After independence from Portugal in 1975 it became the battleground for one of Africa’s most horrifying civil wars. An estimated one million people were killed during 16 years of fighting, and millions more were displaced. The ordeal not only made the gravely poor gravely poorer, it also destroyed whatever infrastructure colonialism had bequeathed.
Peace finally arrived in 1992, and the two warring armies — the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique, or Frelimo, and the Mozambique National Resistance, or Renamo — were transformed into competing political parties. Frelimo was declared the winner of the nation’s first three presidential elections, and the expectation this year had been a second term for President Armando E. Guebuza and a larger Frelimo majority in Parliament.
But then came an abrupt plot twist, the creation in March of the Mozambique Democratic Movement, or M.D.M., by Daviz Simango, mayor of the seaport Beira. He had taken office in 2003 as a Renamo candidate and won re-election last November as an independent, becoming the only non-Frelimo mayor in the nation. Mr. Simango appeared to be that rare upstart who might one day be hard to stop.
Mr. Simango, a 45-year-old civil engineer, has a personal story as compelling as a Shakespearean tragedy. His father was a founder of Frelimo who split with the organization toward the end of the liberation struggle. Mr. Simango’s parents were considered traitors, and, according to various historical accounts, were clandestinely executed.
“When someone new comes along with that kind of history and charisma, the others start to worry,” said Miguel de Brito, Mozambique country director for EISA, a nonprofit group working for democratic reforms in Africa. “Renamo has been in decline, and Frelimo saw Simango as a threat. His party could have taken root this time and become a real force in the future. Frelimo decided to obliterate it right from the start.”
On Sept. 6, the nation’s election commission announced that while Mr. Simango would be one of three candidates for president, inadequate paperwork would keep M.D.M. from competing for parliamentary seats in 9 of the nation’s 13 voting constituencies. Political handicappers quickly redid their arithmetic. It now appeared the new party could win only a dozen or so of the 250 seats.
Frelimo is thought to dominate the nominally independent election commission, and its reasons for rejecting individual candidates were kept secret.
“In any election there will be irregularities, but these unexplained exclusions corrupted the entire process,” said Sheik Abdul Carimo, spokesman for the Electoral Observatory, a coalition of religious and civic groups that monitors elections.
On Sept. 10, a group representing many of the foreign donors met with the commission’s president. Several diplomats spoke. Mr. Chapman, the American envoy, made remarks construed to be a rebuke. He had said, “After all, the democratic process is not meant to exclude, but rather is meant to include all in the process.”
Such censure struck many in Frelimo’s hierarchy as hypocritical. Joaquim Chissano, Mozambique’s first elected president and one of Africa’s leading statesmen, said during an interview at his home last week that the commission had rigorously followed the law. “You can’t say to people that they need the rule of law and then tell the country to operate outside the law,” he said.
Diplomats demanded meetings with the government.
“They came twice,” said Aiuba Cuereneia, the minister of planning and development. “We told them that President Obama, when he came to Africa, said one of Africa’s problems is complying with the law. So we are complying. If the law says the lists of candidates had to be filed in a certain way, that is how it has to be.”
The commission’s ruling was appealed to the Constitutional Council. It unanimously confirmed the earlier ruling, leading critics to complain that it too was under Frelimo’s thumb. A legal opinion commissioned privately by several of the donors said “political bias” kept the case from being decided differently.
“Under President Guebuza, the party and the state seem almost the same,” said one Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “If you want a public job or even a scholarship, you need to be a member of Frelimo.”
He added: “This country had been devastated by war, and for 10 or 15 years we were happy as long as the situation remained stable. This place had such a long way to go; there were vast improvements in all the poverty indicators. We had taken it for granted that Mozambique was on the right road. There is a perception now that there has been a turn of direction.”
But the donors say their options for censuring the government for a tainted election are limited. Cuts in aid might hurt the poor masses in the countryside more than the rich and powerful here in Maputo.
In place likes Bobole, just 35 miles from the capital, the poor have little margin for making do with less, although for many the political battle in the capital seems remote.
“Yes, I know all about the election, but I have no trust in politicians,” said Wasse Narciso, a 34-year-old mother of five who was carrying a five-gallon water jug on her head from the well to her home a mile away. “There is no president in Mozambique; there is only God, and sometimes I am even unsure of that.”

Charles Mangwiro contributed reporting.