Abstract:
When Joaquin Chissano, newly-elected president of the east African nation of Mozambique, takes office in October, 1994, he inherits the despair and destruction which has followed 16 years of civil war. This so-called "in box" case frames the choices Chissano faces, as he considers how to allocate public spending in his first year in office. With sharply limited funds available, he must choose his political and budget priorities. Among his competing considerations are such things as the possibility of cleaning up an estimated 2 million land mines; repairing damaged and decayed bridges and roads, or embarking on ambitious education improvements in a nation with a largely (62 percent) illiterate population which has been forced out of rural areas to the cities. In addition, Chissano must proceed in a new political context: a long-running dictatorship has been replaced by multi-party democracy.
