Africa-Press – Mozambique. Only a party Congress has the power to sack Ossufo Momade, the leader of Mozambique’s former rebel movement Renamo, the Renamo General Secretary Clementina Bomba told a Maputo press conference on Thursday.
Former Renamo guerrillas are threatening to resume their campaign of occupation of the party’s provincial and district offices in order to force the leadership to hold a meeting of the Renamo National Council. Apparently, they believe that the Council will force Momade to resign.
Bomba said this belief is mistaken, since it is only the Renamo Congress that can sack the Party’s president. Momade was elected president at a Renamo Congress in 2019 and then re-elected at a Congress last year. This gives Momade a degree of democratic legitimacy.
The former guerrillas have threatened to close down the Renamo offices “definitively”. But Bomba urged calm and told the dissidents that a meeting of the National Council will be held in the near future. But she gave no firm date.
The National Council is the highest body of Renamo in the interval between Congresses, and it should meet at least twice a year.
“But it must be clear that the National Council has no power to sack the Party president, and the term of office of the President is five years”, said Bomba. “The term of office of the new President does not begin until the end of the term of the outgoing president. It is the congress that can decide whether President Ossufo Momade remains in office or not”.
The former guerrillas had demanded that the National Council meeting be thrown open to the fighters and other Renamo members. But Bomba stressed that the Council only has 120 members, and the right to vote at the Council is restricted to those 120 people.
“Guests and other members can give their opinions, but they do not take the decisions” said Bomba. “It’s very important that the National Council should know that it has no power to sack the President”.
She stressed that the Renamo leadership is interested in restoring harmony to the party, and pointed to a recent meeting with the Association of Renamo War Veterans “seeking to find ways to overcome the problems of the demobilised fighters”.
One of the decisions taken by that meeting, Bomba said, was that all the Renamo offices occupied by the demobilised should be reopened.
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