Mozambique Main opposition maps next move after election rout

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Mozambique Main opposition maps next move after election rout

2:22 CAT | 21 Oct 2019

RENAMO supporters in Maputo, Mozambique. Photographer: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP via Getty Images

Opposition seen unlikely to return to fighting the government
President Filipe Nyusi looks set for a clear victory in vote

Mozambique’s main opposition party is meeting on Monday to decide its next move as the ruling party looked set for a landslide victory in the southeast African nation’s disputed general election.

Renamo has claimed last week’s vote was rigged and called for it to be nullified. The preliminary results of two-thirds of the ballots counted show President Filipe Nyusi leading with 75%, while Renamo obtained 20% support — much less than expected. Renamo, short for the Mozambican National Resistance, fought a 16-year civil war against the government until 1992.

“We had the most fraudulent elections ever seen in our country,” Renamo President Ossufo Momade told reporters in the capital, Maputo, as the party’s political commission meeting started. “In the face of this scandalous fraud, Renamo has been under pressure from all quarters of Mozambican society and must do its utmost to restore the true electoral results.”

At stake is control over an economy that’s expected to become one of the world’s biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas, as companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Total SA plan projects of more than $50 billion in the country’s northern region.

The elections were seen as a test of a peace deal Nyusi signed with Momade in August. The government has violated the agreement, and the ruling Frelimo party “is clearly demonstrating it does not want peace,” the opposition said Oct. 19.

‘Significant concerns’

International observer missions monitoring the campaign and voting, including the Southern African Development Community and the African Union, said the process was generally peaceful and orderly while raising concerns about voter-registration disputes. But the EU and U.S. monitors were more critical.

“The U.S. Embassy has significant concerns regarding problems and irregularities that may impact perceptions of the integrity of the electoral process,” it said in a statement Friday.

Still, it’s unlikely that Renamo fighters who clashed with the government from 2013 to 2016 will again take up arms, according to Andre Thomashausen, a lawyer who previously advised the party and helped negotiate the first peace deal signed in 1994. Momade took over as head of Renamo last year after the death of long-time leader Afonso Dhlakama.

“It’s very difficult to go back to war,” he said by phone. “They’re not well-equipped anymore.”

By Borges Nhamire and Matthew Hill

Source: Bloomberg