Mozambique Elections: Renamo has lodged appeals in all Maputo district courts

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Mozambique Elections: Renamo has lodged appeals in all Maputo district courts

7:27 CAT | 18 Oct 2023

FILE - For illustration purposes only. Protesters gather for a demonstration called by Renamo against election results in Maputo, 17 October 2023. [File photo: Lusa]

Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, declared on Tuesday that it has lodged appeals against the declared results of last week’s municipal elections in all the Maputo city district courts.

Speaking at the start of another Renamo march repudiating the official results as fraudulent, Venancio Mondlane, the head of the Renamo list of candidates for the Maputo Municipal Assembly, who will become mayor of Maputo, if the Renamo appeals are accepted, said “We have sent the case to the district courts of Chamanculo, KaMavota, KaMabukwana, KaMaxaquene and KaMpfumo”.

Cited in the electronic version of the independent paper “O Pais”, Mondlane added “yesterday the judge asked the CNE (National Elections Commission) and STAE (Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat) about the whereabouts of the results sheets (“editais”) and the polling station minutes”.

He claimed that the CNE and STAE “admitted that they do not have those documents”. Thus the only results sheets that have entered the courts are those submitted by Renamo.

Renamo says these are genuine editais, issued at the polling stations, immediately after the close of polls last Wednesday, and they prove that it won the Maputo election.

Accompanied by Renamo leader Ossufo Momade, and by the Renamo mayor of the central city of Quelimane, Manuel de Araujo, Mondlane said this was just the start of a national march to reject what Renamo regards as fake election results.

On Sunday, at the end of an extraordinary meeting of the Renamo National Political Commission, Momade declared “what I want is a national demonstration, not a war”.

Also on Sunday, Araujo criticized the international community for its “passivity”.

He claimed that the ruling Frelimo Party “now that they have the money that comes from the natural gas, think they no longer need the international community. Since they know that the international community is looking for our gas, they blackmail it”.

He was particularly angered that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Maputo for one day last week, “seeking our gas. That’s why the international community doesn’t open its mouth, and closes its eyes to the atrocities of Frelimo, because they’re offering our gas, they’re selling it cheaply, and in exchange they sell our dignity and our rights”.

Araujo promised a diplomatic drive, in which Renamo would carry its case to various European parliaments, “so that the members of these parliaments question their governments, and monitor the situation of human rights and democracy in Mozambique”.

Araujo said he is already in telephone contact with various ambassadors, and would follow this up with face-to-face meetings. Next week, he hoped to go to the European Union headquarters in Brussels “so that the Europeans, who are financing Frelimo, know what they are doing here”.

For its part, Frelimo has urged calm until the final results are announced. For Mozambique’s lengthy and time-consuming procedures mean that the count of the votes cast in last Wednesday’s elections is nowhere near complete.

After the count at the polling stations immediately after the close of polls, those results sheets are consolidated into the “intermediate” count. Those results are then sent from the districts to the provincial elections commissions. All the results so far announced have been “intermediate counts”, made by the district commissions.

The National Elections Commission (CNE) should then send the provincial results to the Constitutional Council, the country’s highest body in terms of constitutional and electoral law, for validation and proclamation.

Frelimo General Secretary Roque Silva declared that Frelimo has total confidence in the electoral management bodies in counting the votes, and in dealing with any irregularities.

He claimed that “the institutional and legal framework established in our country is able to act transparently and in an unbiased way with regard to all the claims and complaints that are duly presented”.

Source: AIM