Mozambique elections: Renamo leader insists he will not recognise results

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique elections: Renamo leader insists he will not recognise results

5:09 CAT | 12 Nov 2019

FILE: For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Savana]

The leader of Renamo, Mozambique’s main opposition party and the defeated candidate in the recent presidential election, Ossufo Momade, reiterated on Sunday that he will not recognise the results, calling the polls “a scam”.

“We will never recognise the results, because what happened on October 15 was not an election, it was a scam,” Momade said at a rally in the northern city of Nampula.

Momade accused the ruling Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo) and its presidential candidate, Filipe Nyusi, of “theft” in the ballot, adding that the Political Commission of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) would convene the party’s National Council to decide their next step in relation to the electoral process.

“I want to be the President of the Republic through popular will and not through manipulation” of election results, he said.

Momade insisted that Filipe Nyusi and his party won the general election by stuffing ballot boxes.

“I am very sure that they have a heavy conscience, because that is what happens to the thief who eats the stolen goat,” he said.

The Renamo leader accused Frelimo of wishing to install a dictatorship in the country, through the absolute majority it got in the legislative elections.

“What Frelimo wants is to govern by dictatorship and not through popular vote. They want to change the Constitution to return the country to the one party system. We will not allow that; we will never falter,” Momade said.

The results of the October 15 general elections announced by the National Election Commission of Mozambique (CNE) gave a considerable advantage to Frelimo, Filipe Nyusi winning a second term as president with 73% of the vote.

Frelimo took 184 out of the 250 seats in parliament with 73.6% of the vote – more than the two-thirds majority needed to approve constitutional changes.

Source: Lusa