Mozambique Elections: Candidate Venâncio Mondlane rejects repeat elections

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Mozambique Elections: Candidate Venâncio Mondlane rejects repeat elections

4:04 CAT | 09 Dec 2024

File photo: Lusa

Presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane stated today that the appeal filed with the Constitutional Council “presents strong grounds” for his “unequivocal victory”, and he therefore rejects the possibility of repeating the general elections of October 9.

“We have an appeal in the hands of the Constitutional Council that presents strong grounds for an unequivocal victory for Venâncio Mondlane and the Podemos [the party supporting his candidacy]. Why would we opt for a repeat election?” Mondlane asks in a written interview with Lusa news agency.

“This would benefit the offender and would set a terrible precedent: whenever there was evidence that an election had been lost, it was enough to commit a series of illicit acts for the elections to be continually and infinitely annulled. When Frelimo says it won, it is not annulled, it is proclaimed; other parties, when they win, go for annulment,” he said ironically in the same response.

Two of the four presidential candidates, Lutero Simango, president of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), and Ossufo Momade, leader of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the two largest opposition parties in Mozambique, have already demanded the annulment of the electoral process and a repeat of the elections, alleging fraud and various irregularities.

The Mozambican Bar Association has also admitted the possibility of annulling and repeating the vote as a way out of the post-electoral crisis that the country has been experiencing for almost two months.

For Venâncio Mondlane, who does not recognize the results announced by the National Electoral Commission (CNE), which still have to be validated by the Constitutional Council, if this body maintains the victory of the Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo, in power) and its presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo, the scenario will be clear: “The beginning of chaos and the consummation of the sinister deaths on the road falling off the wall called Frelimo”.

Since October 21, Mozambique has been experiencing successive strikes and demonstrations throughout the country, which have degenerated into clashes with the police that have already caused more than a hundred deaths.

Venâncio Mondlane, who has been calling for this protest on the streets, guarantees that only two measures can lead him to suspend these protests: “First, the electoral truth. Then, compensation for the families of those murdered, unconditional assistance for the injured and immediate and unconditional release of all of those detained.”

“At least 103 people have died in post-election demonstrations in Mozambique since October 21, according to an update posted today by the NGO Decide Electoral Platform

According to the report released by Decide, there have been 27 deaths in the current phase of demonstrations (Dec 3 to 7): 10 in Gaza, eight in Nampula, and three deaths in Cabo Delgado. Previously, the NGO had counted at least 274 suffering gunshot wounds during demonstrations and strikes contesting the election results since October 21, and 3,450 people arrested.

Source: Lusa