By Tom Bowker
(Bloomberg) — Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, will end a boycott of Parliament after its leader Afonso Dhlakama met with President Filipe Nyusi to discuss a dispute over elections last year.
Dhlakama and Nyusi met on Saturday for the first time since the opposition Mozambique National Resistance, or Renamo, protested the victory of ruling party Front for the Liberation of Mozambique in an October vote.
“I can say that the country will not have problems” because during the talks “everything went well,” Dhlakama told reporters in the capital, Maputo, after almost three hours of discussion at a hotel. Lawmakers from his party will be sworn in “within a short time,” he said.
Renamo had been given until Feb. 11 to take their seats in the legislature. The ruling party won 144 seats in the 250-seat assembly, with the opposition made up of 89 Renamo deputies and 17 from the Mozambique Democratic Movement.
Frelimo has ruled the southeast African nation of 26 million people since independence from Portugal in 1975. It fought a 17-year civil war with Renamo, which ended in 1992. Hostilities resumed in 2012 and ended last year after the government agreed to electoral reforms and to integrate Renamo fighters into the defense force.
Dhlakama plans to meet with Nyusi again in the coming days to continue negotiations. He was “satisfied” at having put his concerns to Nyusi, Dhlakama said.
Nyusi, a former defense minister, was sworn in as president on Jan. 15 after his election victory was confirmed by the country’s Constitutional Court. On Jan. 10, Dhlakama said he planned to establish an autonomous region in areas of central and northern Mozambique, where he polled higher than Nyusi, and serve as its president. – BLOOMBERG
