Maputo, 22 Sep (AIM) – Many thousands of people packed the streets of the central Mozambican city of Beira over the weekend for the official launch of Anamola (National Alliance for a Free and Autonomous Mozambique), the political party founded by former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, the most prominent opposition figure in the country.
Beira has long been an opposition stronghold, and the municipal council is currently run by the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM). The Anamola founding ceremonies were entirely peaceful, and the police made no attempt to disperse the large crowds that poured onto the streets to greet Mondlane.
According to Mondlane, speaking on Sunday at the party launch, held simultaneously with the first meeting of the new party’s National Council, Mozambique needs to be “rescued”, and to achieve this Anamola will be guided by three fundamental and non-negotiable pillars, namely: social justice, political ethics, and judicial independence.
“Social justice is an essential value for a strong pact between Mozambicans at a moment when the country’s justice system needs to be reformed, with a focus on financial autonomy. We also call for electoral reform, especially in the initial counting phase, which is the main cause of post-election problems”, he said.
Mondlane believes that the “Inclusive National Dialogue”, launched by President Daniel Chapo, makes no sense without the inclusion of Anamola, “because our political project was crucial for the creation of a national dialogue. However, they are leaving us out.”
The agreement on the “Inclusive National Dialogue” was signed last March by Chapo and nine political parties, before Anamola had been set up. Although some of these parties are tiny, they have each been given seats on the Technica Commission guiding the dialogue.
Anamola to date has no seat on the Commission, although Mondlane was the runner-up in the October 2024 presidential election and can mobilise much larger crowds than any other opposition figure.
“When they start carrying out the consultation process for the dialogue, Anamola will also be carrying out its own public consultation in order to hear and know what the people really think about the dialogue”, declared Mondlane “Anamola speaks for a significant segment of the Mozambican population”.
Mondlane also announced that over the previous 24 hours, the party registered 26,000 members throughout the country.
“Anyone may enter our digital platforms to see how many members the party has”, he said. “We recently launched the digital platform, but it was congested because the number of membership requests was very high. To solve the problem, we were forced to triplicate the processor capacity in order to register more members”.
Among those who welcomed the foundation of Anamola was the former chairperson of the National Statistics Institute (INE), Rosario Fernandes, although he told the independent newsheet “Carta de Mocambique”, that he is not a member of Anamola and has no interest in running for office.
“My ambition”, he said, “is for missions where values supplant social benefits and privileges”. He had resigned from the ruling Frelimo Party in 2004, and is not currently a member of any political party.
Fernandes said that whenever he had been asked to run for office, he refused. “When I noted that such offices are vehicles for hidden interests, I did not hesitate to resign”, he stressed.
Fernandes said he was encouraging Anamola to reject “solutions of blood, which were the options taken by various liberation movements, including Frelimo, in favour of peaceful and loyal disputes at the ballot box”.
(AIM)
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