ABSTRACT
The President's public speeches, which form the communication action that has the greatest visibility and media repercussion in the scope of the Presidencias Abertas e Inclusivas (PAIs), constitute an important element of the President's public relations strategy. Public relations functions already play important roles in the nation-building process of many developing nations. This chapter analyses the President's speeches from several perspectives with a common objective: to ascertain to what extent public relations can influence the attribution of meaning to the concepts of national identity and unity. This is an added challenge within Mozambique's reality since it is a 'deeply divided society' at socio-economic, cultural and linguistic levels. Mozambique has a presidential political system where the President of the Republic is both head of state and head of government. In recent democracies, there are also broader democratic concerns about how information emanating from the government is controlled and used strategically to exercise power.
