You have to ask why a party would choose the least popular person available over the most popular one to be its candidate in a presidential election.
That’s what Frelimo did in Mozambique at the weekend.
The central committee chose Defence Minister Filipe Nyussi to succeed President Armando Guebuza as its candidate in the October presidential election.
There were five candidates in the central committee election; the others were Agriculture Minister Jose Pacheco, Prime Minister Alberto Vaquina, and two former prime ministers, Luisa Diogo and Aires Ali.
Pacheco, Vaquina and Ali dropped out in the first round, leaving Nyussi and Diogo to face each other in a run-off in which Nyussi won 135 votes (68 percent) to 61 votes for Diogo (31 percent).
Yet even Frelimo sympathisers acknowledge that Nyussi was the least known among the five candidates and that the party is going to have to work extra hard to familiarise him to voters before October.
He will almost certainly face the two best known figures in the opposition – Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the former rebel movement Renamo, and Daviz Simango, leader of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), a breakaway from Renamo.
The only recent opinion poll in Mozambique, published in the independent paper Savana a week ago, showed that Diogo was far and away the most popular of the possible Frelimo candidates. Also, that if an election were held tomorrow, she would easily beat Simango and Dhlakama.
Nyussi trailed at the bottom of this poll.
But of course Frelimo will win the October elections anyway, and the only question is by how much. The central committee election, therefore, was evidently not so much about Frelimo’s best interests as Guebuza’s.
He will remain powerful as Frelimo’s president for some time after the October elections and was clearly looking for a weak successor as national president whom he would easily influence, including not to interfere in his extensive business interests.
The corruption and the increasing concentration of power around Guebuza are causing widespread concern across the nation and even in the party itself, and this will surely now grow.
After Frelimo announced some time ago that Nyussi, Pacheco and Vaquina had been shortlisted for the election for the party’s presidential candidate, party stalwarts such as former president Joaquim Chissano, and, according to some reports, Nelson Mandela’s widow, Graça Machel, stepped in to protest that the shortlisting was a violation of Frelimo’s internal democratic procedures.
That’s when the popular Diogo and Ali were added to the list of candidates.
In vain, it now transpires.
Guebuza seems to be winning at a more subtle political game than some commentators believe.
They suspected he had been deliberately provoking the recent outburst of warfare with Renamo, Frelimo’s former civil war enemy, now its chief political opponent, so he could declare a state of emergency to justify postponing the elections and thus remain in power.
Now the Renamo insurgency has subsided because Frelimo has submitted to Renamo’s demands to have greater representation on the national electoral commission.
Frelimo itself and some independent observers believe this was in effect blackmail by Renamo, but Frelimo grudgingly agreed to the changes for the sake of peace.
So did the MDM, which was perhaps the biggest loser as its representation is much smaller than Renamo’s, which managed to reassert itself through the electoral reforms as Frelimo’s chief rival.
For Guebuza and Frelimo the changes to the electoral commission may have served a more subtle purpose than just ending warfare with Frelimo.
Renamo was boycotting elections while Frelimo was rejecting its demands for a greater say in the electoral commission.
That helped the MDM do much better in the municipal elections last November than Frelimo expected. It sent a warning that it was the real future threat to Frelimo’s power.
With Renamo presumably now back in the field for October’s elections, it is likely to split the opposition vote with the MDM and boost Frelimo’s performance.