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Mozambique: a democracy looking for consolidation - Salomão Moyana

by Elma Doeleman

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The afternoon session opens with a waterfall of words from veteran journalist Salomão Moyana. At high speed he sketches the actual political situation in Mozambique, just two months away from the next presidential and parliamentary elections.
Salomão Moyana at the expertmeeting

To counter his image as a negativist, Moyana starts off with some positive facts about his country. Quoting last year’s research of the National Statistics Institute, Moyana says that the percentage of people living in absolute poverty has reduced from 67 in 1998 to 52 in 2003. In recent years the economy has shown a growth rate of 7 to 8 % annually, one of the highest on the continent. Foreign investment has been considerable.

For instance a consortium of Indian businesses has just won the concession for exploration of the railway and port system of Beira, including rehabilitation of the Sena line to the coal mines of Moatize. After years of negotiations the government succeeded an 80 million dollar loan for the reconstruction of the country’s most important bridge over the Zambezi river, which will connect the south and north of the country. The aluminium smelter Mozal near Maputo, whose construction has cost 1.4 billions of dollars, is already exporting aluminium to some European countries. Just as the 800 km long pipeline from Temane to South Africa, with investment costs of 1.2 billion dollars, is now exporting natural gas to the big neighbour. And negotiations are well under way between Mozambique and Portugal on increasing Mozambique’s stake in the Hydro-electric of Cabora Bassa from the hands of the former coloniser (with 82 % of the shares) to the Mozambican government (so far with only 18 % of shares).

But let’s turn to the democratisation process and the forthcoming elections. In the ten years since the first multiparty elections, Mozambique has come a long way, says Moyana. “We can now speak of a democracy that is looking to consolidate itself. Nobody doubts the fact that we have elections at regular intervals. Everybody finds it normal to go to the ballot box every five years.”

For the first time there is a National Elections Commission with a civil society representative on board. Of the seven seats, six are taken by the two political parties in parliament. For the seventh, the chairperson, civil society can come up with five candidates, and the six other members select one of them. “I was one of the candidates, but I lost the election”, says Moyana with a big smile.

Another new element is the Constitutional Council, the highest organ to supervise the elections. In earlier occasions this task was done by the High Court, which the opposition accused of partiality. For instance when Renamo demanded a recount of the votes in the 1999 elections, the High Court refused to do this. As a result, Renamo never recognised the outcome, which created instability in the country and led to over 100 deaths the following year. But at last year’s municipal elections, Renamo’s complaints about fraud were taken seriously by the Constitutional Council, which ultimately led to a Renamo victory in the city of Beira.


Many eyes focused on elections

Since 1998, the electoral law allows, besides external observer missions, also national observers in the polling stations. Several national NGOs are active in the observation process and some have formed the Election Observatory, a conglomerate of NGOs and religious groups. They had a crucial role in the municipal elections of 2003, as they carried out a parallel count, which in some cases brought to light irregularities in the official counting process and thus changed the final result. This year it will have up to 2500 national observers. Apart from that, there are the foreign observers from the Carter Center, the European Union and others. In other words, whether the parties like it or not, the elections will be quite transparent with so many eyes focused on them.

In May this year, the political parties agreed on a code of conduct and ethics during the electoral process, promising to guarantee a free and fair process. Although it still doesn’t have force of law, all parties have signed it and proposed it to the CNE to be included in the electoral law.

President Chissano has decided not to run for a third term, although legally he was allowed to. Frelimo’s candidate, Armando Guebuza, a nationalist and big businessman, has chosen two main themes for the election campaign: combating corruption and the fight against poverty. Guebuza was not a man of Chissano’s liking, and this might work against him. Because, as a consequence, the two men operate apart in their campaigning trips to the districts. “Guebuza would only stand a chance if Chissano would accompany him and present him as his official successor”, Moyana thinks.

Besides the two large parties, Frelimo and Renamo, another 39 have officially been registered, of which 10 are together in the Electoral Union that pacted with Renamo to get seats in parliament. However, parties don’t campaign about programmes but only criticise one another in unmistakable terms. The two large contenders accuse each other of political intimidation in distanced districts, and in some cases it has led to violence. But, reassuringly, Moyana comments: “This is normal in an election year, it happens every time. It is not really endangering our peace.”

A new aspect in the democratisation process is the fact that some weeks ago parties held internal elections for the first time in history. The grass roots could pronounce themselves on the performance of the deputies in parliament. Historical names of both large parties were not chosen on an eligible place for the coming elections, which led to some big surprises for the politicians involved.


Corruption
Corruption: a big issue for the independent press

Despite the positive democratic developments, Moyana notices a big problem: corruption. This is one of the issues in the run up to the elections, especially promoted by Guebuza who made it one of the two main themes of his campaign. “He only failed to say up to now what kind of corruption he will combat. Probably he will reveal this only after being elected. The thing is, corruption has poisoned the whole Mozambican system, and Guebuza is part of that very system.” He will have to take drastic measures to fight the conflict of interests that are ingrained in the system. For instance, one individual can be a minister and at the same time own a cleaning agency, which then receives the order to clean the whole ministry. Or a minister has a large stake in a travel agency and consequently all tickets of his officials will be booked through that agency.

There are several initiatives in Mozambican society to combat corruption. Nearly two years ago the president created the Anti Corruption Unit inside the General Attorney’s Office. The Unit has carried out several courageous investigations, but so far no case has gone to court. “Apparently some high level hands are prohibiting this”, says Moyana.

There’s also a NGO called Ética Moçambique, which collaborates well with the above mentioned Unit. Ética investigates corruption charges in its own way and hands the results to the Unit, to have them prosecute it. Another important action of Ética is a public awareness campaign around legislation. E.g. if your car misses one headlight, that doesn’t mean that the police is authorised to confiscate it. You have to pay a fine of a certain amount and that’s it. Ética is now working with some hospitals to have them hanging price lists on the wall and tell the patients to always demand a receipt, thus avoiding illegal demands for money.


Where is this law?

Moyana confirms that the media in Mozambique are in fact independent. It is one of only two countries in the region that does not have a ministry of information any longer. This was abolished during the discussions on a new constitution in 1990. In fact the article in the constitution, guaranteeing independence of the media and freedom of expression, has been designed by a group of 165 journalists. It stipulates the right to information from official sources and it even states the right of journalists to protect their sources. “I have been called more than once to the court on the instigation of one or another individual. The attorney wanted me to reveal my sources, but I said: ‘I can’t do that’. ‘Why not?’, he asked. ‘Because the law guarantees protection’. ‘Where is this law?’ ‘Actually I have it here right in my bag’. Only when I showed it to him, the attorney was convinced.

Generally, Moyana is satisfied with the attitude of the government towards the media. One example is the fact that former prime-minister, Pascoal Mocumbi, during all ten years of his premiership every Friday morning held a briefing for journalists on what was going on in government. Another example was the attitude of President Chissano, when during the trial on the assassination of Carlos Cardoso, Chissano’s son was implemented by some witnesses and, even without proof, the media gave him a hard time. When asked what he thought of that, Chissano answered: “My son is 33 years old, I’m sure he can fend for himself”. But there are some doubts about the future. “At least one of the main presidential candidates might not have so much patience with the media”, fears Moyana.

Even within the media corruption exists. It is quite common for anyone requiring press attention to contact individual journalists and make sure they receive something. Also institutions try to influence what is being published about them. Moyana recalls a case last year of the mega-supermarket Shoprite. One reporter had discovered it was selling products out of date. When he went to speak to the director, instead of an interview he received an envelop and the words: “We can resolve this in another manner”. The journalist in question accepted the envelop and left, but went straight to his editor and exposed the case. “But I’m afraid in most cases the journalists just take the money and shut up”.


Limitations for independent press

Several circumstances combine to restrict the effective influence of the independent press. The circulation is small, because the majority of the population can’t read Portuguese. Poverty also counts: the 15.000 meticais that buys you a paper, is good for five or six breads, so you can imagine the priority. Another factor is the price of air transport: each kilo of paper costs 5 USD. And the provinces have no local capacity to print a paper, everything has to come from Maputo.

An interesting phenomenon is that all the independent papers are owned by journalists; there’s no affluent businessman interested to invest in the media. However, last year a number of independent papers formed the Association of Journalistic Enterprises, which will reinforce the capacity of these media to negotiate with the government and private capital. A first success they achieved was a reduction of 25 % of telecommunications costs for all newspapers. A next step will be negotiating cheaper transport tariffs.


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