Africa-Press – Mozambique. A group of 22 Frelimo deputies has been heard in the Assembly of the Republic since Monday by the Mozambican Public Prosecutor, targeted by the party’s former spokesperson, Caifadine Manasse, for defamation and insult.
According to the order from the Specialized Department for the Criminal Area of the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), to which Lusa had access, it was planned to interrogate six Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) deputies targeted in this process on Monday on Friday and two others today, including Damião José, who is also a member of the party’s political committee.
The rest will be heard – all as “suspects” and “indicted for the crime of defamation and insult” – daily until Friday.
All are identified in the order as “deputies effectively exercising their functions”, which is why the Assembly of the Republic was determined as -the “place of interrogations”.
Former Frelimo spokesperson Caifadine Manasse, current deputy, stated on August 15, in the PGR, that he was the victim of a “cabal” of 26 party colleagues, essentially deputies, who he intends to put on trial.
“It’s a process that was a cabal just to get to me. I’m here looking for the material truth,” Frelimo spokesperson and deputy Caifadine Manasse told journalists outside the PGR in Maputo, where he was interviewed for around eight hours by a deputy attorney general, as part of the criminal complaint he filed in May.
“This is the moment when a new step begins, the search for justice is a process. It is easier to destroy, but to restore the justice that I want, that my family wants, my comrades who are members of the Frelimo party want, I had to take all this time,” he said, acknowledging that it was a “very complex” process.
In the complaint he filed, and which led him to make statements to the PGR, Manasse accused 23 fellow deputies elected by Frelimo by the Zambézia electoral circle (out of a total of 28, including himself), of having signed a document based on “facts offensive to the honour and good name” and that caused the complainant to be expelled in March from the provincial committee of the ruling party in Zambézia province, in the centre of the country.
He complained that they accused him of having implicated a party member in drug trafficking, which the party ended up not proving.
“We first moved forward with the number of 23, it is true that we submitted [on August 15] a few more names to be part of this dossier, which is very complex, but we will have the necessary time to find what is the search for Justice, the seeking our integrity, our good name and asserting constitutional rights, rights that are the prerogative of our Frelimo party,” he pointed out, recognizing that three more party members were added to the criminal complaint.
“I want to emphasise here that it has nothing to do with Frelimo as a political party. It has to do with a group of individuals, which coincides with these individuals being members of the Frelimo party, which I am here participating in the PGR,” he added.
“We are a party that advocates peace, justice, stability and, above all, respect for the Constitution of the Republic and other laws. And I am here exercising my legal and, above all, statutory constitutional right, because as members of the party, we have an obligation to have integrity,” he said.
“And it is this integrity that leads me to be here to try to clear my good name, but also to help clear the name of the party, because the party will not want to hear that its spokesperson was accused of so many things that in five years has never appeared before,” he concluded, alluding to the fact that the process is taking place at a time when Mozambique is holding local elections (last October) and general elections (October, 2024).
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