CIP Mozambique Elections: Elvino Dias was killed preparing a draft of the Podemos appeal to the Constitutional Council

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

CIP Mozambique Elections: Elvino Dias was killed preparing a draft of the Podemos appeal to the Constitutional Council

7:13 CAT | 20 Oct 2024

Image: Jornal Alerta

Elvino Dias was preparing a draft of the Podemos party’s appeal to be submitted to the Constitutional Council as soon as the CNE announced the results. The CNE is expected to publish the results of 9 October general elections next Wednesday (23 October). With his assassination, the process may be jeopardised, but it will still go ahead. Other lawyers will step in to continue the work already started by the deceased.

Venancio Mondlane, had already called a general strike for tomorrow, Monday, and said simply that citizens should not go to work. But with the murders Mondlane has transformed the strike. He urged his supporters to gather at the site of the murders on Av Joaquim Chissano, Maputo, at 09.00 on Monday. Then a demonstration will set off at 10.00, marching through the streets of the city. He insisted that the march would be peaceful, and warned potential demonstrators not to do anything that might be interpreted as “vandalism”. The police had threatened to repress any disorder, “but we are not going to do anything disorderly”.

Mondlane accused the defence and security forces of killing his lawyer and advisor Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, party agent of Podemos. He said the police had tried to hide their involvement by collecting spent cartridges from the scene of the crime, and seizing or damaging cell phones from potential witnesses.

Witnesses claim that when the police arrived the did not allow an ambulance to take Guambe, then still alive, and the woman who was also shot, to the hospital.

The attack was very similar to the 7 October 2009 police hit squad murder of civil society and observer leader Anastácio Matavel in Xai Xai just before the elections five years ago. And Elvino Dias had warned recently on Facebook that he and Venâncio Mondlane were targets of death squads.

Interior Ministry and City Command contradict each other

In the first police statement yesterday, Lionel Muchina, spokesperson for the Maputo City Police Command, told a press conference that the victims were murdered by individuals with whom they had had an argument over “marital issues” at the Pulmão market in the Malhangalene neighbourhood, around 300 metres from where they were shot. Muchina said that after the argument, the individuals, whose names he would not reveal, followed the victims, blocking their car and then riddling them with bullets.

At the end of the day, Interior Minister Pascoal Ronda reacted to the murders of Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe and said that the authorities should clarify the case quickly. However, the spokesman for the Maputo City Police Command had already gone public to announce, without there having been an investigation, that Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe were murdered after a marital conflict. AIM reported today that “there was not the slightest evidence for this, apart from the fact that Dias had given a lift to a woman, Andacia Macuacua.”

At the end of the day yesterday, Interior Minister Pascoal Ronda reacted to the murders of Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe and said “the government urges Sernic and the police to clarify these cases quickly and to bring the perpetrators to justice and make them accountable”.

‘Electoral administration bodies discredit & tarnish the entire electoral process’, says Bar Association

A damning indictment of the electoral administration was issued on Friday,18 October, by the Bar Association (Ordem dos Advogados). For example, it says the Constitutional Council cannot generate confidence in the electoral justice system, “not because it is a partisan body, but because its decisions do not, in substance, reflect any sense of fairness and balance.”

“It was not to be expected that 30 years after the introduction of multi-party voting we would still be discussing ballot box stuffing, erased and false editais, the number of voters and votes above those registered at the polling station, and other basic electoral irregularities. All this is all the more serious given the total silence of the electoral administration bodies, which discredits and tarnishes the entire electoral process,” the Bar Association says.

“The Mozambican Bar Association, within its statutory duties of defending the democratic rule of law, challenges and even urges the National Electoral Commission to publish all the tabulation minutes and editais – partial, intermediate and general – in order to remove any opacity present in the tabulation of votes. This will contribute to the credibility of the electoral process and the democratic legitimisation of those elected. Otherwise, our seriousness will be besmirched by mud.”

Source: Centro de Integridade Pública - CIP Eleições