Guebuza: claims of corruption are 'just talk'

In an interview in Brussels on 16 December 2012 with President Armando Guebuza, the questioner said: "One of the key questions in Mozambique is how to improve governance.

Mozambique is still troubled by corruption problems and lack of transparency." Guebuza responded angrily: "I do not agree with that characterization. This is just talk." The interviewer citied Transparency International, but the President repeated: "Whoever might be saying this, it is just talk."

The interview was done for the magazine Great Insights, published by the European Centre for Development Policy Management in Maastricht, Netherlands, which published a special issue on Mozambique.

http://www.ecdpm.org/Web_ECDPM/Web/Content/Download.nsf/0/C9912335D7E74BBCC1257AD4002D349B/$FILE/GREAT1-10final.pdf

The issue contained a number of critical articles. Paul Malin, head of the European Union delegation in Maputo, wrote that "while the economy may be changing rapidly, the political system is resistant to change. A multi-party democracy exists in which many of the practices of the oneparty era continue. Access to information is limited and accountability mechanisms weak. There is confusion between party and state." And he warned that "there remain parts of the country largely unchanged since peace was established 20 years ago, but they are shrinking."

And Marc de Tollenare, who worked for more than a decade in Mozambique, including for the Swiss embassy, writes: "On the political front, all objectives were made secondary to securing continued rule by Frelimo. For Frelimo this is nothing less than complying with a historical mission resulting from the fact that it liberated the country from colonial rule."

"The point made is not that Frelimo intentionally tries to keep a majority of the Mozambicans poor. The point is rather that there are stronger political incentives than poverty reduction that have shaped the political economy of Mozambique," he continues. This "has produced a state apparatus that is not geared towards the production of collective goods and securing equal rights and protection for all citizens. The state is turned in[to] an executive branch of a party."

But he is critical of the donors as well. "The core activity of embassies is quickly shifting from aid to business. The good governance agenda has been put on hold, or transferred to the business sector."

Fonte: MOZAMBIQUE News reports & clippings 210 28 December 2012