Mozambique's ruling Frelimo Party dropped all references to a Marxist-Leninist ideology in its draft program Friday, back-peddling on its policies since independence from Portugal in 1975 under a crippling civil war and a bankrupt treasury.
President Joaquim Chissano said the party program - expected to be approved before Sunday at the end of the first National Congress in five years - put the solutions to the nation's crisis in a "real framework," though not necessarily "an ideal one."English excerpts of the program carried by the official Mozambican News Agency noted the government's commitment to socialism remained unchanged. But it added the state is no longer defined as a "revolutionary democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants."
Gone are all references to Marxist-Leninism and class struggle. The role of the party as the "vanguard of the worker-peasant alliance" has been replaced by the party as the "vanguard . . . of the Mozambican people."
The draft reverses an agricultural policy endorsing state farms, while in foreign policy, the program abandons the concept of a "world anti-imperialist front" and no longer gives privilege to the "international working class movement."
Dropping the commitment to a Marxist-Leninist ideology, last affirmed at the party's congress in 1983, was no surprise and generally reflected the country's increasing dependence upon the West to sustain itself and its diminishing reliance on Moscow.