MOZAMBIQUE: New president pledges "unrelenting fight against poverty"

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

MAPUTO, 2 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - Armando Guebuza was sworn in as Mozambique's new president on Wednesday, in an inauguration generally seen as ushering in a fresh, reformist agenda for the country.

Fernando Goncalves, editor-in chief of Savana, an independently weekly, told IRIN he was cautiously optimistic that Guebuza could deliver. "We will judge him by his actions, but what we can say at the moment is, it is a good sign that he has identified corruption as a major problem in Mozambique."

Guebuza, one of Mozambique's wealthiest businessmen, is a veteran of the country's liberation struggle, and has been at the centre of politics since independence in 1975. He has a reputation for having a populist touch and a no-nonsense approach, and in his election campaign signalled that he was coming with a new broom.

At his swearing in, Guebuza pledged an "unrelenting fight against poverty".

His predecessor, Joaquim Chissano, foreign minister for 11 years before he became president in 1986, led Mozambique out of a brutal civil war with the rebel group, RENAMO, and into multi-party elections and the embrace of the free market.

Mozambique's economy has been lauded as a star performer by western donors. Real annual GDP growth has averaged close to 7 percent for the past 17 years, and the proportion of the population living in absolute poverty declined from almost 70 percent in 1997 to 54 percent in 2002 - but progress has favoured the south of the country.

The country's image has been dulled in recent years by the corrosive impact of corruption, and one high-profile case in particular: the assassination in 2000 of the respected investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso, in which Chissano's own son, Nyimpine, was implicated.

Cardoso was investigating the disappearance of US $14 million from Mozambique's then largest bank, BCM, when he was shot, execution style, in the middle of the capital, Maputo.

Nyimpine appeared as a witness in the ensuing trial, held in a tent pitched in the grounds of a maximum-security prison, and was named by some of the convicted killers as the person who had paid for Cardoso's murder. Nyimpine has always denied the allegation, claiming that the money was in fact for illegal currency transactions.

"Chissano's presidency was tainted by this fact [his son's alleged role] and also the fact that Anibalzinho [one of the convicted killers] was allowed to escape, not just once, but twice," said Goncalves.

Anibal dos Santos Junior (Anibalzinho as he is commonly known) first escaped in September 2002, just before his trial, with the apparent complicity of the police. He was tried in absentia and sentenced to 28 years, was finally caught in South Africa in January 2003 and returned to Mozambique.

He escaped again in May 2004, with a false passport and an air ticket to Canada, where he was detained on arrival by immigration officials at Toronto International Airport. Last month he deported to Mozambique, where he is expected to be retried.

Analyst and author Joseph Hanlon wrote that this would "surely put the Chissano family back in the spotlight ... despite admitting money laundering, he [Nyimpine] has never been tried."

Although constitutionally entitled to run for a third term, Chissano stepped down and the party elected Guebuza as the presidential candidate of the ruling party, FRELIMO. Guebuza delivered a landslide election victory in December 2004.

His last post was as FRELIMO secretary-general, but Guebuza has held a string of senior government positions, and headed the government delegation negotiating the 1990/92 peace agreement with RENAMO.

As minister of the interior in 1983, he is also remembered as being responsible for "Operation Production", in which thousands of unemployed youth in Maputo and Beira were rounded up and forcibly sent to work camps in the isolated northern province of Niassa.

Herlim Costel, a Mozambican filmmaker, remarked, "He is strong - Mozambique needs that. We need someone who will tell someone who is not doing well to leave his/her position. Chissano was good, but was more diplomatic."

Guebuza read the writing on the wall with the collapse of the Soviet Union and abandoned his Marxist-Leninism, taking advantage of the privatisation of the former state-controlled economy to own shares in key industries. He advocates an economic nationalism aimed at empowering local business leaders and the middle class.

But his record of leadership positions also poses a personal challenge, noted Goncalves. "The ordinary person can ask, 'what did he do, when he was secretary-general, to prevent what he is now saying he is going to fight against?'"

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