Mozambique Elections: NGO denounces alleged bribe paid to Podemos party leader – Watch

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Mozambique Elections: NGO denounces alleged bribe paid to Podemos party leader – Watch

4:23 CAT | 14 Jan 2025

Screen grab: CDD Moçambique/Facebook

The Mozambican non-governmental organisation Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CDD) on Tuesday submitted a report to the attorney general’s office about an alleged bribe to the leader of the Podemos party, which supported the presidential candidacy of Venâncio Mondlane.

“It’s information from people who claim to be close to this operation. We came here to make the denunciation to the relevant institution and it will have to audit its public spending and assets from a certain point onwards,” Adriano Nuvunga, director of the CDD, told the media moments after submitting the document at the premises of the central anti-corruption office (GCCC) in Maputo.

At issue is the disagreement between presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who is leading the biggest ever contestation of the election results in Mozambique, and the party that supported him, the Optimistic People for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), until last year an extra-parliamentary political grouping that is now the main opposition force in the country.

Registered in May 2019 and made up of dissidents from the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), Podemos has seen its popularity rise since announcing on 21 August its support for Mondlane’s presidential candidacy as a result of a ‘political agreement’, shortly after Mondlane had his coalition (CAD) rejected by the Constitutional Council for ‘irregularities’.

A week ago, the leader of Podemos, Albino Forquilha, admitted that there were differences in the “strategy of struggle” between the party and Mondlane, advocating an end to the demonstrations for the sake of dialogue, although he promised to comply with the established agreement.

Although the agreement is still in force, the relationship between the parties became tense when the party decided to take office in parliament without Mondlane’s consent, who argues that the results were fraudulent and that the swearing-in, which was boycotted by the other two opposition parties (Renamo and MDM), was hasty.

According to the NGO denunciation, Albino Forquilha allegedly received a sum of 219 million meticais (€3.3 million) to “sell electoral justice”.

“Since the payment was in kind, as we are told, it is also easy to trace,” added Nuvunga.

Lusa contacted Podemos’ communications department, which promised a reaction in “due course”.

Podemos is the result of a dissidence by former Frelimo members, who called for more ‘economic inclusion’ and left the ruling party, claiming ‘disenchantment’ and different ambitions at the time.

The results promulgated by the Constitutional Council (CC) on the 23rd point to Podemos as the largest opposition party in Mozambique in the next parliament, with 43 seats, taking away a status that had been held by the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) since the first multiparty elections in 1994.

Of the 250 seats that make up the parliament, Renamo has gone from 60 members, which it won in the 2019 legislative elections, to 28 parliamentarians.

Frelimo, in power since independence, maintained its parliamentary majority with 171 MPs.

In the presidential elections, the CC, the final court of appeal in electoral disputes, proclaimed Daniel Chapo, the Frelimo-backed candidate, as the winner with 65.17% of the vote.

Chapo’s election as Filipe Nyusi’s successor is, however, being contested on the streets and the CC’s announcement has added to the chaos that the country has been experiencing since October, with pro-Mondlane demonstrators – a candidate who, according to the Constitutional Council, obtained only 24 % of the vote but claims victory – in protests demanding the ‘restoration of electoral truth’, with barricades, looting and clashes with the police.

Clashes between police and protesters have already left 300 people dead and more than 600 injured by gunfire, according to civil society organisations monitoring the process.

Source: Lusa