Parties in the dock

Good afternoon and welcome to yesterday’s daily. Mozambique’s political parties demand accountability from their opponents, but struggle to accept it from their own members. The court action against the leadership of Podemos exposes that contradiction, as members take their disputes outside the party when internal rules cannot constrain those in charge.

The Maputo City Judicial Court has intervened following an application by Hélder Mendonça, a former secretary-general, challenging the continued tenure of the party's central bodies on the ground that their mandates have expired. Reporting on the interim order says those bodies have been barred from acting, which puts Albino Forquilha's leadership in question, though an interim measure should not be mistaken for a final settlement of the dispute.

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Podemos already faced a separate financial dispute. In September the same court ordered its accounts frozen, and opened a qualified-disobedience case against the leadership, after it failed to honour a 2024 memorandum with the Associação Solidariedade Cívica de Moçambique on the sharing of electoral funds. The cases concern different obligations, but together they describe a party whose leadership, finances and agreements have all become matters for a judge.

Renamo tells a similar story. António Muchanga went to court over his suspension, arguing that the disciplinary process broke the party's own statutes, after he had criticised Ossufo Momade's leadership; a Maputo court found the party had denied him a hearing. Whatever the merits of each case, the lesson is the same. It is hard to hold leaders to account through institutions those leaders control.