Mozambique Elections: Renamo and MDM will not recognise election results – AIM

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Mozambique Elections: Renamo and MDM will not recognise election results – AIM

6:01 CAT | 30 Oct 2023

Photo: O País

Mozambique’s two main opposition parties, Renamo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), declared on Friday that they will not accept the municipal election results, as declared provisionally on Thursday by the National Elections Commission (CNE), which claimed that the ruling Frelimo Party had won in 64 of the 65 municipalities.

At a Maputo press conference, the Renamo General Secretary, Clementina Bomba, said the elections had been characterized by countless irregularities, including clandestine voter registration, ballot box stuffing by polling station chairpersons, the removal by the police of ballot boxes and opposition poll monitors and the theft of opposition votes on polling day.

The results as announced by the CNE, she accused, were an attack upon peace, democracy and social stability. They had been corrupted in order to deliver victory to Frelimo.

Bomba demanded that “electoral truth” be restored, and rested her hopes on the Constitutional Council, Mozambique’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law.

Renamo has appealed to the Constitutional Council against the CNE’s results, and from the Council Bomba expected “fair decisions that safeguard the highest interests of the nation”. She stressed that Renamo does not intend to go back to war.

She added that, while waiting for the Council’s ruling, Renamo will continue to organize peaceful marches throughout the country in protest against what Renamo regards as electoral fraud.

The manipulation of the election results, Bomba said, “means the liquidation of democracy, and it is the duty of every peace-loving citizen to prevent this from happening”.

At a separate Maputo press conference, MDM leader Lutero Simango blamed the CNE and its executive body, the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) for what he called an “electoral crisis”.

“The CNE and STAE handled the entire elections very badly”, he said. “We blame the CNE and STAE. They are the ones who are truly responsible for this crisis”.

Among many other irregularities, they had allowed ballot boxes to be stuffed, he claimed.

Although STAE is, on paper, subordinate to the CNE, Simango said that, in reality, “the CNE has no capacity to manage STAE. It has been operating in isolation since the voter registration”.

Manipulation and fraud were mounted by the CNE and STAE during the elections “in order to benefit the ruling party”, he accused.

He called on the Constitutional Council “to restore electoral justice, in order to guarantee the credibility, not only of the election, but also of the Mozambican judicial system”.

Source: AIM