Good afternoon. It is unusual for a government minister in Mozambique to flatly reject government policy, but that is what interior minister Paulo Chachine has done in criticising the decision to move the National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic) out of his ministry and to the Attorney-General’s Office (see below).
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Fernando Lima
Chachine did not say a word to complain when the move was announced six months ago. His comments seem rather confused: on the one hand, he says that the change only exists “on paper” and not in reality, but on the other, he claims that the police are suffering due to no longer having an intelligence service at their command. Extraordinarily, he expresses the hope that Sernic can be moved back to the interior ministry. Has he told President Daniel Chapo that he was wrong to approve the move?
There is no need for Sernic to be moved back in order for the police to do their job. Given proper procedures for doing so, the police can perfectly well cooperate with Sernic and ask them for information without controlling them as they did before. In this way the FBI in the United States cooperates with police forces without answering to them or giving them full access to investigations.
