{{Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo party picked Defence Minister Filipe Nyussi as its presidential candidate late Saturday, a decision likely to see current President Armando Guebuza maintain influence even after he steps down following October polls}}.
“Filipe Nyussi won with 68 per cent,” party spokesman Damiao Jose told AFP early Sunday following two rounds of voting.
Members of the party’s powerful central committee burst into song and jostled to congratulate the minister after its caucus ended at midnight Matola outside the capital Maputo.
“Congratulations Frelimo,” Nyussi told said after his win. When asked how he felt, he said: “I am from Frelimo,” referring to a long history with the former liberation movement.
Frelimo – a formerly Marxist-Leninist but now avowedly capitalist party – has won every election since Mozambique’s civil war ended 21 years ago, and is expected to do so again in October.
This means Nyussi is effectively president-in-waiting.
Armando Guebuza is set to step down as president of the resource-rich country after his two terms are up, but retains the party leadership.
The ex-Marxist won 2009 polls with 75 percent of the vote and while in power has expanded his business empire to media, mining, construction and fishing sectors.
Detractors have suggested he plans to follow the example of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and cling to power from behind the scenes after his presidential mandate ends.
{{War veterans’ lobby}}
Nyussi, a Guebuza loyalist, has eight months to prepare for presidential polls set for October 15.
The 55-year-old former state railway employee emerged as the front-runner amongst three “pre-candidates”.
A last minute push by influential figures inside Frelimo widened the field to five, but dark horse former prime minister Luisa Diogo won only 31 per cent in the final round of voting Saturday.
Born in 1958 to independence fighters in Frelimo’s battle against Portuguese colonial rule, Nyussi literally grew up inside the party.
“He is umbilically attached to Frelimo,” one insider said.
Nyussi moves easily between all factions inside Frelimo, having spent his early years in camps for exiled fighters in neighbouring Tanzania and later trained in mechanical engineering in then-Czechoslovakia.
He is particularly well-liked amongst the powerful war veterans’ lobby even though he – as all the other candidates – come from the post-colonial generation.
Nyussi’s Maconde origins from the far northern Cabo Delgado Province has helped him garner support from amongst powerful Frelimo generals from the north.
The party is sensitive to the need to placate its northern members now that huge natural gas reserves have been discovered off Cabo Delgado’s shores.
{{Renamo insurgency}}
President Guebuza picked Nyussi as Defence Minister in 2008 after he had made a name for himself inside the state-owned ports and railway company CFM, where he was executive director of its northern branch in 1995 and served on the board from 2007.
While on the board, Nyussi founded a freight handling and stowage company, Somoestiva, which critics decried as a conflict of interests.
He has been hailed in some quarters for revitalising a moribund army with the recent purchase of fighter jets and other heavy military equipment.
However, the Guebuza administration’s handling of a revived Renamo insurgency earned a backlash from the public who viewed military intervention as too heavy handed.
If elected later this year, Nyussi will become the country’s fourth president since independence from Portugal in 1975.
He will preside over one of Africa’s most promising economies, with seven per cent annual growth in recent years on the back of new coal mines and vast gas reserves.
But together with that comes the challenge to distribute wealth to the country’s 24 million people, over half of whom lived under the poverty line in 2009, according to the World Bank.
He will also have to manage fraught relations with Renamo, the rebel movement which became the official opposition after a peace treaty in 1992 ended its 16-year civil war against Frelimo.
But as Renamo’s power has waned it remobilised its veterans, killing dozens of mostly civilians in attacks on highways, demanding a more equitable spread of the country’s wealth and a change to electoral laws.
AFP
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