mozambique: JUDGE SAYS SOME AT TOP ARE 'UNTOUCHABLE'

Domingos. Here they carried guns, and threatened to kill Tayob.

Matters only calmed down with the arrival of the police,
called by the hotel management.

When "Mediafax" phoned him, Domingos confirmed the incident.
"Renamo is trying to sabotage the conference", he said. "Renamo
is moving its men to the places where the delegates are
accommodated. We've already informed the police of this".

"These men are committing acts of political terrorism",
Domingos added. "They are threatening democracy. This kind of
scenario is dangerous".

The new force founded by Domingos as yet has no name. The
name will be announced when the conference closes on Saturday.
2003 (AIM)
pf/ (289)

81003E RAUL DOMINGOS CREATES NEW POLITICAL PARTY

Maputo, 2 Oct 2003 (AIM) - Raul Domingos, the former head of the
parliamentary group of Mozambique's main opposition party,
Renamo, who was expelled from that party in 2000, announced on
Wednesday in Maputo that he is to lead a new party that will be
set up this weekend.

The founding meeting is to begin on Thursday in the central
city of Quelimane, and should conclude on Saturday with the
formal announcement of the new party. Domingos expected the
meeting to be attended by about 120 delegates and 100 guests,
including politicians, religious and traditional leaders, and
business people.

No name for the party has yet been announced. Domingos said
that the names suggested so far include "Liberal Democratic
Party", "Progressive Democratic Party", and "Democratic Party for
Reconciliation and National Development", but the final decision
on this matter will only be taken during the Quelimane meeting.

Interviewed by the Maputo daily "Noticias", Domingos said
that the idea of formalising his party on 4 October was to make
it coincide with the anniversary of the signing of the General
Peace Accord, in Rome, that ended Renamo's war of
destabilisation.

Domingos led the Renamo delegation that negotiated the
accord, while the then transport minister, Armando Guebuza, who
is now secretary general of the ruling Frelimo party, headed the
government delegation.

On his future party's political orientation and agenda,
Domingos said that it will pursue centre-right policies, and "we
will be a party that will center on the human factor, because we
know that human beings are the centre and the guarantee of
development of the country and the world".

As for why he decided to create a new political party,
Domingos said this arose from the need to reverse the current
social and economic trends and form of governance, where he says
the existing political parties and national decision making
bodies have been failing.

"There is a growing feeling in the country of the need to
find a credible alternative for conducting the country's
destinies", he said.

He added that another reason was the feeling, in the
national political arena, that once he was expelled from Renamo
his years of political experience should be capitalised upon.

"It was thus that a movement started growing around me to
create a political party without, however, dropping the
activities of the Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPADE)", he
explained.

Domingos set IPADE up in 2001 as an NGO, gathering members
from different sectors, with or without political affiliation.
Its declared purpose was to promote and consolidate peace in the
country.

"I felt there was a political void to be filled", Domingos
told the paper, "particularly concerning the creation of a
balance in the Mozambican political arena, since the two main
parties (Frelimo and Renamo) have been working in an environment
of tension, both in parliament and in other situations".
2003 (AIM)
bm/pf (475)

==============
DHLAKAMA THREATS
==============

111903E DHLAKAMA THREATENS TO SEIZE POWER

Maputo, 29 Sept 2003 (AIM) - Afonso Dhlakama, leader of Mozambique's
former rebel movement Renamo, has threatened to seize power in
2004, regardless of whether what he called "Frelimo fraud" should
happen in the general elections scheduled for that year.

Speaking at a rally in the central city of Chimoio on
Saturday, Dhlakama told the crowd that if the ruling Frelimo
Party "steals our votes again in 2004, Renamo will form a
government, and we're going to govern".

"Fraud" is the Renamo synonym for a Frelimo victory -
Frelimo won in both previous general elections in 1994 and 1999,
but Renamo has dismissed these victories as fraudulent, even
though the UN Special Representative in Mozambique in 1994, Aldo
Ajello, described the elections of that year as "the best ever
held in Africa".

"We've had enough fraud", Dhlakama told the rally. "We're
going to govern as from 2004. I know you're demoralised because
in 94 and 99 you voted for Renamo and Dhlakama, but the votes
were stolen by Frelimo. We'll tell Frelimo - if you want to
provoke us, we shall respond".

After the rally, a reporter from the Beira daily "Diario de
Mocambique" asked Dhlakama if he was threatening a coup d'etat.
He denied this, and boasted "We're going to win. In 1994 we won
the elections, but we were robbed. In 1999 we won, and we were
also robbed".

"In 2004, with the improvement in the electoral law which
will permit better control, we have every conviction that we're
going to win", he added. "If Frelimo steals the votes, it can
steal, but we're certainly going to form a government even then".

He then confirmed that, as far as Renamo was concerned, any
Frelimo victory had to be fraudulent. "Frelimo can never be
victorious", Dhlakama claimed. "How can Frelimo be victorious if
in 1994 they stole the votes ? I have proof of this, and
everybody knows. It was worse in 1999". He then launched into an
attack on Rev. Jamisse Taimo, the chairman of the 1999 National
Elections Commission (CNE), claiming that he had ordered a stop
to the vote counting, and had produced the result on his own.

Unfortunately for Dhlakama, the first person to announce a
Frelimo victory in 1999 was Renamo spokesman Gulamo Jafar.
Although Jafar claimed that Renamo had won, the figures he
produced at a press conference on 14 December showed precisely
the opposite, as journalists who analysed them (notably the late
Carlos Cardoso) had no difficulty in proving.

"So Frelimo is never going to win any elections in this
country", declared Dhlakama. "Any victory is the fruit of theft".

"Diario de Mocambique" insisted, and Dhlakama retreated a
little. If Frelimo really did win because the people voted for
it, then Renamo would accept the result "because that's
democracy. We claim fraud when there is fraud, and we present
proof. What we condemn is this phoney victory which began in
1994".

If "fraud" were to happen again, "we shall form a
government, just as happened in Madagascar", he threatened.

Indeed, Dhlakama now claimed it was a mistake not to have
formed his own government in 1999. He believed "the international
community would have forced Frelimo to accept a recount and we
would be governing. The mistake was ours, but there's no problem,
we forgave Frelimo. But in 2004 we're not going to forgive, and
we're going to govern".

Dhlakama claimed that, if he seizes power in 2004, he would
be "respecting the will of the people".

"Dhlakama has to respect the people's demands", he said,
"because I've already disrespected the people twice".

As for this year's municipal elections, Dhlakama boasted
that Renamo will win "in more than half the municipalities, even
with Frelimo fraud. That's guaranteed".
2003 (AIM)
pf/ (633)

71003E CHISSANO CONDEMNS DHLAKAMA AS "ANTI-DEMOCRATIC"

Tokyo, 2 Oct 2003 (AIM) - Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano has
declared that threats made last week by Afonso Dhlakama, leader
of the former rebel movement Renamo, that he will not allow
Frelimo to go on governing after the 2004 elections, reveal his
anti-democratic nature.

Speaking in the central city of Chimoio on Saturday,
Dhlakama declared that the ruling Frelimo Party "can never be
victorious", and that even if "Frelimo steals our votes again,
Renamo will form a government, and we're going to govern".

When AIM asked Chissano about these remarks, at the end of
his visit to Tokyo, the President said these were "the statements
of an anti-democrat", who wanted to replace the usual rules of
democracy.

"You can't know in advance the outcome of elections that
haven't taken place", said Chissano. "At the most, you can hope
that you're going to win, but you can never have absolute
certainty, as Dhlakama and his party have been claiming. Only the
electoral bodies, and in this case the observers, can determine
who will be the winner once the electorate has cast its votes".

"You don't know who's won in advance", insisted the
President. "That's why I say these statements are simply anti-
democratic".

Dhlakama had cited approvingly the conflict in Madagascar,
when the country was split in two and there were briefly two
rival governments. Chissano retorted that "what happened in
Madagascar is not something that you can wish happens to a
country. It's something that resulted in unnecessary death and
destruction, which we in Mozambique should avoid at all costs".

Chissano expressed his surprise at Renamo's insistent
allegations that its opponents are committed fraud. He did not
understand how Dhlakama "always sees fraud in elections that have
not yet been held".
2003 (AIM)
gm/pf (298)

==============
VOTER REGISTRATION
& ELECTION DISPUTES
==============

54903E DHLAKAMA TELLS LIES ABOUT VOTER REGISTRATION
by Paul Fauvet

Maputo, 12 Sept 2003 (AIM) - Once again, Afonso Dhlakama, leader of
Mozambique's former rebel movement Renamo, has claimed that the
forthcoming municipal elections will be fraudulent, and that the
ruling Frelimo Party is trying to rig the results in advance.

In a lengthy interview published in the latest issue of the
weekly paper "Zambeze", Dhlakama claimed that he recently toured
several municipalities in the centre and north of the country "to
block the manoeuvres of Frelimo, I went there to give training
courses on how to avoid the manoeuvres of Frelimo".

As in every other Mozambican multi-party election, Renamo is
shouting fraud months in advance, so that it will have a simple
justification for its supporters, if it loses. In this interview
he had an easy ride, facing nothing that could remotely be
regarded as hostile or aggressive questioning.

Thus Dhlakama could make the most outrageous statements
without risk of being challenged. He claimed for instance, that
during the June/July voter registration exercise, in the northern
town of Montepuez "whole neighbourhoods were not registered and
Frelimo went and registered people more than 45 kilometres away
because it has sympathisers there".

Had the "Zambeze" reporters done their homework they would
have known that Montepuez is a Frelimo stronghold. In the 1999
parliamentary elections Frelimo won more than twice as many votes
as Renamo in the Montepuez municipality (10,861 for Frelimo, and
4,391 for Renamo). With such a majority, Frelimo would hardly
need to bus in people from dozens of kilometres away.

Dhlakama also claimed that registration brigades that went
to pro-Renamo areas "had instructions to register only a few
people per day. Few people were registered in the areas where
it's known that the majority votes for Renamo".

Again he cited Montepuez, where the vast majority happen to
be Frelimo voters, but also the town of Monapo. This really is a
Renamo area - Renamo took 9,927 votes in Monapo in 1999 to 5,339
for Frelimo. Dhlakama claimed that in Monapo 17,000 potential
voters were not registered because of "Frelimo manoeuvres".

The figure is impossible. In 1999, there were 33,026
registered voters in Monapo (most of whom abstained in 1999).
These people are still on the electoral register: the June/July
exercise was to add the names of people who had reached the age
of 18 since 1999, or who had, for whatever reason, not registered
in the 1990s.

Essentially, the registration brigades had to reach people
aged between 18 and 21. From the data in the 1997 census, it can
be calculated that in Monapo there are about 2,500 people in this
age group.

Dhlakama claimed he had seen a letter from the Frelimo
Central Committee ordering the district administrator to omit the
17,000 Monapo voters. The "Zambeze" reporters did not ask to see
a copy of this letter. But since the 17,000 voters do not exist,
it is safe to assume that the letter is equally fictitious.

Dhlakama launched a venomous attack on Antonio Carrasco, the
general director of the Electoral Administration Technical
Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the civil service.
Carrasco, he declared, "is incompetent. He's done a dirty job. I
say Carrasco's incompetent, and it's not worth him saying at
STAE".

Far from challenging this assessment, the "Zambeze"
reporters asked "Can we understand one thing - is Carrasco
incompetent, or is he being manipulated ?" To which Dhlakama
replied that he didn't know.

Despite his claims that Frelimo is manipulating the entire
electoral process, Dhlakama also boasted that Frelimo "is on the
path to extinction", and that "it is the smallest party that
exists, and bears no comparison with Renamo".

Thus in one breath Dhlakama says that Frelimo's hand is
everwhere, and in the next that Frelimo is a dying organisation.
One does not expect consistency and coherence from somebody with
Dhlakama's track record - but it is a pity that experienced
journalists allow him to get away with it.
2003 (AIM)

78903E STAE ISSUES REMAINING VOTER CARDS

Maputo, 19 Sept 2003 (AIM) - The Electoral Administration Technical
Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch of the Mozambican civil
service, on Friday begins issuing voter cards to 28,000
registered voters who were unable to collect them in July.

In June and July, the electoral registers were updated and
over two million names added to them. Everyone who registered
should have received their voter's card, complete with
photograph.

But towards the end of the period, many of the registration
brigades ran out of film. In some cases, theft of film is
suspected.

Turning away people who wished to exercise their right to
vote would have been unthinkable, and so their names were written
into the electoral registers, and they were told to return later
for their cards.

STAE says it will issued the cards to these voters over the
coming week. Each of the voters affected should return to the
same post where he or she registered, or to the district and city
STAE directorates, where his photo will be taken and his card
issued.

The political parties contesting the November local
elections have been invited to monitor the issuing of these voter
cards.

STAE has not yet revealed how much this extra week of work
by the registration brigades will cost.
2003 (AIM)
pf/ (213)

40903E CARRASCO CRITICISES ELECTORAL LAW

Maputo, 9 Sept 2003 (AIM) - Antonio Carrasco, director of the
Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the
electoral branch of the Mozambican civil service, warned in
Maputo on Tuesday that the electoral legislation is out of line
with the country's reality.

Speaking to reporters, Carrasco criticised the Mozambican
parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, for passing a law which
politicised STAE. That law allows the political parties
represented in the Assembly (the ruling Frelimo Party, and the
opposition Renamo-Electoral Union coalition) to appoint staff to
STAE at all levels.

This politicisation of what ought to be part of the civil
service in no way assisted STAE in carrying out any of its tasks,
said Carrasco.

The fact that parties nominated people to STAE, in reality
led to the setting up of parallel STAEs, he accused. This had an
impact on the updating of the electoral registers in June and
July, in which some militants of political parties were placed in
the registration brigades.

"We had brigade members who wore political colours, and this
ended up damaging the process", said Carrasco. On occasion, STAE
central bodies had to intervene promptly to correct the activity
of such individuals.

Carrasco also blamed the theft of voter registration
material on people "who have no notion of state, only of
politics".
2003 (AIM)
vc/pf (221)

113903E CNE DEPUTY CHAIRPERSON CONDEMNED AS "UNETHICAL"

Maputo, 29 Sept 2003 (AIM) - Filipe Mandlate, spokesperson for
Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE), on Monday
condemned as "unethical" a press conference given earlier in the
day by CNE Deputy Chairperson, Jose de Castro.

Castro, one of the eight CNE members appointed by the former
rebel movement Renamo, had accused Mandlate of misreporting CNE
decisions, and of preparing fraud in the forthcoming municipal
elections.

"It is extraordinary and unheard of that the deputy
chairperson of a state body should discuss problems, not within
that body, but outside it", Mandlate told reporters.

AIM pointed out that this was not at all unprecedented -
Castro had done exactly the same thing on the two previous CNEs,
of which he was also deputy chairperson, in 1998 and 1999. Indeed
it became a regular occurrence for Castro to hold press
conferences to denounce the acts of a body of which he was
senior member.

"Perhaps I think it unusual because this is the first time
I've been a member of the CNE", said Mandlate. "I regard Castro's
behaviour as a gross violation of ethics. Problems should be
discussed inside the CNE. Of the matters raised by Castro, most
have never been discussed inside the CNE".

He added that people who disagree with CNE decisions can
appeal against them to the Constitutional Council (a body that
does not yet exist, and whose functions are being exercised by
the Supreme Court).

Mandlate said he was not sure whether Castro's attack was
the official position of Renamo, or just his own view. "His
position is, to say the least, infantile", he said.

Mandlate pointed out that so far work on the CNE has taken
place in a polite and harmonious way. All CNE decisions to date
have been taken by consensus, and there has been no need to vote
on anything.

"The members appointed by Renamo participate at all stages
of reflection and decision taking", he said. "So Castro's
statements are very far from the truth".

One of Castro's specific claims was that the Electoral
Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), the electoral branch
of the civil service, had been altering the size of
municipalities without authorisation from the CNE. He claimed,
for instance, that it had reduced the size of Nampula city, by
knocking off a couple of neighbourhoods, but had increased the
size of Manhica, in Maputo province.

Mandlate said the size of municipalities had nothing to do
with the CNE or STAE. The law on municipalities of 1997 gives the
government (through the Ministry of State Administration) the
power to determine the exact boundaries of municipalities.

Castro had also attacked the alleged close friendship
between Mandlate and the STAE general director Antonio Carrasco.
He found the relationship between Mandlate and Carrasco highly
suspicious, and believed that it presaged fraud in the
forthcoming elections.

Mandlate replied that his relationship with Carrasco "is
just a professional one. The first time I met him was here, when
I was appointed to the CNE. He is an excellent professional. If
there's any relation between us, it's simply because of our
jobs - I am the spokesman and he is the general director".

Nor did Mandlate know of any instance in which STAE had
"disobeyed" instructions from the CNE, as Castro had alleged.

He defended himself against claims of misreporting CNE
decisions to the press. If the full CNE allowed him to do so, he
would show reporters minutes of CNE meetings, and they could make
up their own minds as to whether his press briefings fairly
reflected the decisions taken.

In any case, he added, "the concept of fraud is defined in
the law, and failing to report a decision correctly does not
constitute fraud".

Asked whether the CNE could meet the deadline set by the
electoral law of publishing the list of candidates for the local
elections 30 days before polling, Mandlate said this was the
target the CNE was aiming at.

One problem is that the time frame envisaged in the law is
hopelessly contradictory. On the one hand, the CNE has up to 60
days after the final date for the delivery of candidatures (6
September) to verify that all the paper work is in order. That
would take us up to 5 November - just a fortnight before the
polling date of 19 November.

Yet under the same law the names of the candidates must be
announced not less than 30 days before polling - i.e. by 20
October.

There are 94 candidates for the mayorships of the 33
municipalities, and many thousands of candidates for the
municipal assemblies. Mandlate said the CNE is going through all
their papers: whenever an anomaly is discovered, the candidate
concerned is notified and given five days to correct it.

The CNE has not yet started on perhaps the most difficult
task - verifying that each candidate for mayor, and each list for
the municipal assemblies has gathered supporting signatures from
at least one per cent of the municipal electorate. This will
require painstaking cross-checking to confirm that the supporters
are real, and that there is no duplication.
2003 (AIM)
pf/ (839)

==============
MARINGUE VIOLENCE
==============

39903E LIFE IN MARINGUE BACK TO NORMAL

Maputo, 9 Sept 2003 (AIM) - Life in the small town of Maringue, in the
central Mozambican province of Sofala, has apparently returned to
normal, after disturbances and tension in late August caused by
armed "bodyguards" of the former rebel movement Renamo, reports
Tuesday's issue of the Beira daily "Diario de Mocambique".

There is now a strong police presence in Maringue, and the
armed men have pulled back to an old Renamo base, some 20
kilometres outside the town.

Residents who spoke to the paper said that, although the
Renamo group did them no harm, they had felt frightened.
"Although they didn't do anything bad to the local people, I must
say I was afraid", said Jofriasse Araujo, "since it's not been
normal for these men to come out, armed and uniformed, for three
days".

He was also worried when the Renamo guards briefly laid
siege to the local police command "because the police are the
guarantee of our safety against thieves and other criminals".

A second resident, Farenca Andicene, said "the Renamo men
didn't harm anybody, but we're afraid of their guns".

"There was agitation simply because these guards have guns
and they're wandering through the town", she added.

Some of the armed men told the paper they had come into
Maringue fully armed on 25 August, in order to demand the
whereabouts of one of their number, a man named Meque, who was
supposedly in police detention.

"We noted the absence of our colleague, and we heard from
other sources that he'd been arrested for selling firearms", said
one Renamo source. "What surprises us is that we can't find him
in the jails. We encircled the police command in a peaceful way.
We wanted to know where our colleague was".

The police provincial director of order and public security,
Leonardo Nhantumbo, denied that any harm had come to Meque. He
was indeed under arrest, for the crime of selling guns, but he
was no longer in Maringue.

"He's in Beira, but that's no reason for creating insecurity
among the public", he said.
2003 (AIM)
pf/ (348)

51903E "GOVERNMENT AVOIDED BLOODSHED IN MARINGUE"

Maputo, 11 Sept 2003 (AIM) - The administrator of Maringue district,
in the central Mozambican province of Sofala, Agostinho Matique,
has claimed that the wait-and-see attitude of the riot police, on
the advice of the local government, prevented a bloodshed in a
confrontation with armed men belonging to the former rebel
movement Renamo, who besieged the local police station in late
August.

Cited in Thursday's issue of the Beira daily "Diario de
Mocambique", Matique, who described the situation in Maringue as
now calm, said that those armed men were prepared to start a
clash, which could eventually lead to a return to war.

"What happened in Maringue was worrying indeed, because
those armed men put so much fear into the hearts of local
residents", he said.

Matique said that it was he, as district administrator, who
advised the riot police not to respond to provocation. "I must
admit that they (the armed men) did not cause any disturbance,
but I am certain that if, on our side, there had been any
response to try and force them back to their barracks, there
would have been an unforeseeable situation", he explained.

He added that the Renamo men have returned to their normal
lives, and when they come into the town, they do so in plain
clothes rather than military uniform, and are unarmed.

As for the motives for the August incidents, Matique said
that there are two versions. According to one the Renamo force
was on patrol to protect their leaders, who were to visit the
district (but in fact no senior Renamo leader has visited
Maringue recently).

However, according to the second version, they were
protesting against the arrest of one of their colleagues, Meque
Quatine Moyane, who was accused of illegal possession of and
trafficking in firearms.

This seems to be accurate, for the director of public order
and security in the Sofala police command, Leonardo Nhantumbo,
has confirmed the arrest of Moyane and the charges against him.

"We had information saying that he was to sell 60 firearms
in Beira, and we had to work to neutralise him", Nhantumbo told
the paper.

But Meque Moyane denies the accusation, saying that he was
arrested while drunk, and in possession of no firearm. "It is a
police lie. I never had and I have no plan to sell firearms
because I do not have them", he said.

Nhantumbo confirmed that no firearm was found with Moyane,
who was arrested on the basis of intelligence collected by the
police. However, he said that five AK-47 rifles earlier seized vy
the police are believed to have been supplied by Moyane.
Nhantumbo said investigations are continuing to determine
Moyane's innocence or otherwise.

"If our informant proves to have provided false information,
we will arrest him, because he should not act that way", he said.
2003 (AIM)
bm/pf (476)

ENDS