Mozambique: MDM says Renamo won local elections in Maputo

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Mozambique: MDM says Renamo won local elections in Maputo

4:16 CAT | 16 Oct 2023

Photo: O País

Augusto Mbazo, Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) candidate for Maputo mayor, said this Monday that his party’s parallel count confirms that the Renamo candidate won the capital and not Frelimo.

“It is not up to MDM to share numbers from other parties,” Mbazo told a press conference, continuing: “However, because we are a party that strives for electoral truth, electoral justice and because we respect what is the will of the people, it is important to say here that according to the data contained in the notices that we collected from the tables, which are original notices, and also with our parallel count, Renamo was the party that obtained the highest number of votes in the city of Maputo.”

“However, it is up to Renamo to present evidence to the competent authorities so that justice can be done,” he added.

The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo, in power) was on Saturday declared victorious in the municipal elections in Maputo, the country’s capital, although the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, opposition) candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, had already proclaimed victory and has been promoting daily marches around the city claiming this.

“According to what we have just presented, the head of Frelimo list was elected mayor of Maputo with 58.78% of the votes,” declared Ana Tchemane, president of the Maputo Provincial Electoral Commission, announcing the intermediate count for the capital, with 100% of the notices processed.

According to the intermediate tabulation notice presented on Saturday, Frelimo’s list in the city of Maputo, led by Rasaque Manhique, collected 235,406 votes (58.78%), Renamo’s 134,511 votes (33.59%) and MDM’s 24,365 votes (6.8%).

But, “according to the parallel count that the MDM carried out in the city of Maputo, based on the numbers in the original notices obtained from the voting tables, the MDM obtained 12.56% of the vote and not 6.8% as published”, Augusto Mbazo said.

“The electoral bodies are operative arms of Frelimo and this was proven once again in these sixth local elections. We are an authoritarian state that pretends to be a democratic state. That was proved here, because there is a whole effort not to respect the will of the people,” Mbazo added.

According to the MDM candidate for the Mozambican capital, there was throughout the voting process a “continuous attempt – by the electoral bodies through some presiding officers, but also through some observers – to stuff the ballot boxes”.

“But, as this process did not achieve the desired objectives, there was a shift to ‘Plan B’; in the intermediate counting phase at district level, false notices were used, whose data were different from the data on the original notices obtained at the voting tables. This process was forced and took place under protest from representatives of opposition parties,” Mbazo claimed.

“But also, at this stage, the desired objective was not achieved and then came the move to Plan C, where the count was not carried out at provincial level. STAE met in some room, without the presence of representatives of the parties of the opposition, and invented numbers, which it distributed among the three parties: Frelimo, Renamo and MDM. And this distribution was in accordance with the will of the Frelimo party,” Mbazo alleged.

Speaking in Maputo on Sunday at the end of an extended extraordinary meeting of the Renamo National Political Commission announcing national demonstrations of repudiation starting on Tuesday and recourse to the courts, Renamo leader Ossufo Momade said: “This mega-fraud, the manipulation of electoral results, aims to create an environment of war for Mr. Filipe Jacinto Nyusi [President of the Republic] and the Frelimo party to remain in power illegitimately.”

The sixth municipal elections in Mozambique took place in 65 municipalities across the country on Wednesday, including 12 new municipalities where voting took place for the first time. According to intermediate district and provincial results released by STAE and covering 50 local authorities, Frelimo won in 49 and the MDM in Beira.

Source: Lusa