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Mozambican ex-leader receives prize for honesty

An inaugural prize to reward African leaders for good governance and leaving office voluntarily without plundering the national coffers went to the former president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano, at a ceremony in London on Monday.

Chissano was awarded US$5 million over 10 years and then US$200,000 a year for life by a foundation set up by the Sudanese telecoms tycoon, Mo Ibrahim.

Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general and chairman of the award committee, praised the Mozambican ex-leader for ending a 16-year civil war and voluntarily stepping down in 2005 after two terms as an elected president.

"It is a measure of the remarkable change that has taken place that national and regional elections have been contested in a generally peaceful manner by both sides in the bitter civil war," he said.

Ibrahim said the prize is intended to encourage African leaders to consider a fourth alternative alongside the three he said they currently face when their term in office is complete -- "relative poverty, term extension, or corruption."

The winning criteria included being freely elected and leaving office when the constitution requires it as well as delivering economic and social progress at home and being an influence for good abroad.

Chissano was the favored candidate as one of the few African leaders to leave office with his reputation intact abroad, even if it was under strain at home.

Annan did not mention that Chissano was president for a total of 19 years, almost half of them as an unelected leader in a Marxist one-party state that threw its critics in jail. There was also no reference to the circumstance of Chissano's departure from office as his government was consumed by allegations of corruption and the ruling party turned to another candidate to stave off defeat at the polls.

Chissano's family has also come under scrutiny after his son, Nyimpine, was implicated in the murder in 2000 of a prominent journalist, Carlos Cardoso, who embarrassed the government by exposing corruption. Six men convicted of the killing said Chissano's son had paid them to do it.

Mozambique featured only half way down Ibrahim's own annual good governance index for Africa this year after scoring poorly on key issues such as the rule of law and corruption, and particularly badly on "sustainable economic opportunity" and human development.
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