The general secretary of Mozambique's ruling Frelimo Party, Armando Guebuza, who is also the party's candidate in the forthcoming presidential election, has urged Portuguese businesses to invest in Mozambique, and thus help create jobs and reduce poverty.
Speaking on Wednesday at a Lisbon conference organised by the Sa Carneiro Institute, on the theme of "new challenges in Luso-Mozambican relations", Guebuza said that business intervention, together with the harmonious state relations between the two countries, "will certainly contribute to poverty reduction, to greater social justice, and to strengthening democratic institutions and practices in Mozambique". Guebuza also stressed his hope that Portuguese investment is undertaken in a "spirit of friendship". rather than out of a search for easy profits.
He reminded his audience that Mozambique "is living through a period of peace after long years of a war of destabilisation.
This peace resulted from a deep political will to bring the war to an end, by creating mutual trust which could establish conditions for normalising the lives of Mozambicans".
The climate of peace, he insisted, "has not just been the result of a strategic choice. Above all it is the essence and rationale of the people's struggle over the last four decades".
The chairperson of the Sa Carneiro Institute, Mota Amaral, who is also speaker of the Portuguese parliament, stressed the contribution of Guebuza himself to Mozambican independence and to the peace accord. (Guebuza has been a key figure in the Frelimo leadership since 1968, and headed the government team that negotiated the peace agreement with Renamo in Rome, between 1990 and 1992).
Now that Guebuza was a candidate for the presidency, Mota Amaral said, "we have every interest in hearing his ideas for the future".
Although Frelimo is historically linked with the parties of the Portuguese left, and, like the Portuguese Socialist Party, is a member of the Socialist International, the invitation for Guebuza's current visit came from the right.
The Sa Carneiro Institute is linked to the right-wing Social Democratic Party (PSD), the main force in Portugal's current coalition government.
Fonte: AIM
