Renamo in Nacala opposes Sunday rerun in only a handful of polling stations and warns of serious ...
DW (File photo) / MDM flag
The opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) on Saturday became the first party to announce publicly a candidate for the 2018 municipal elections.
At a meeting in Maputo, the MDM announced that the party’s spokesperson in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Venancio Mondlane, will be its candidate for Mayor of the capital.
This will be the second time that Mondlane has run for Mayor of Maputo. In 2013 he did spectacularly well, taking 42 per cent of the vote in a city that had been regarded as a stronghold of the ruling Frelimo Party. The vote for the current mayor, David Simango of Frelimo, collapsed from 86 per cent in 2008 (when his sole opponent was Eduardo Namburete of the rebel movement Renamo) to 58 per cent in 2013.
“With the strength that the MDM has in Maputo City, we believe that this will be an opportunity to improve the image of the capital, if we manage to win the elections”, Mondlane told the Saturday meeting, according to a report on the independent television station STV.
“We want the country’s capital, and its inhabitants, to become prosperous”, he added, thanking MDM members for their confidence in him.
The MDM political delegate for the city, Elisio Freitas, told reporters that the party had chosen Mondlane “in a transparent process which shows that the party believes in him. The members chose Venancio because they believe in his charisma, and in his leadership and mobilisation capacity. We hope that the citizens of Maputo will also find these qualities in him”.
The task ahead, he added, was “to establish the conditions for the victory of the MDM and its candidate”.
But there is a key difference between the coming elections and those of 2013. In 2013, Renamo boycotted the municipal elections and so in all 53 municipalities the elections were two horse races between Frelimo and the MDM.
This time there will be no boycott. Renamo has promised that it will stand candidates in 2018, thus ensuring that the opposition vote will be divided. The MDM may therefore struggle to hold on to its 2013 share of the vote.
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.