Mozambique: Presidential candidate accuses Podemos leader of breaking agreement

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Mozambique: Presidential candidate accuses Podemos leader of breaking agreement

8:12 CAT | 06 Jan 2025

Screen grab: Venâncio Mondlane / Facebook

Mozambican presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane accused the leader of Podemos, which supported his candidacy, of violating the pre-election agreement between the two parties by acknowledging the inauguration of MPs elected by the party, which has had no parliamentary representation until now.

In a clarification sent on Saturday to political parties, diplomatic representations and the President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi, the authenticity of which was confirmed today by Lusa with Venâncio Mondlane, the candidate, who does not recognise the proclaimed results of the general elections on 9 October, recalls that he signed a “coalition political agreement” with Podemos on 21 August, valid until 2028, which “regulates a series of issues”, including “political decisions by Podemos”.

“Since the esteemed Albino Forquilha, president of the party, has made a series of public and political pronouncements that go against the agreement, it is urgent to warn the Mozambican people and others that such decisions, public pronouncements, agreements and negotiations are null and void, as they violate the spirit and letter of the aforementioned agreement,” the document reads.

The hitherto extra-parliamentary party Povo Otimista para o Desenvolvimento de Moçambique (Podemos), registered in May 2019 and made up of dissidents from the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), has seen its popularity rise since announcing its support for Mondlane’s presidential candidacy on 21 August, as a result of a “political agreement”, shortly after Mondlane had his coalition (CAD) rejected by the Constitutional Council for “irregularities”.

In the document, Venâncio Mondlane recalls that Mozambique is experiencing “one of its greatest political crises generated by the mega electoral fraud” in the October general elections and is “committed to fighting the historic and cyclical electoral fraud”.

“However, in order to bring this struggle to a successful conclusion, which has, among other sacrosanct and non-negotiable desiderata, electoral truth as its epicentre, the illegitimate political crusade of the illustrious president of Podemos must come to an end,” Venâncio Mondlane also writes, saying that “titanic efforts have been made to dissuade him from this contractual and political misadventure, between interpersonal contacts, meetings, writings”.

However, he acknowledged, to his “sadness”, these contacts “were unsuccessful”.

“In fact, one of the most recent cracks was the unfortunate and politically irregular decision to swear in Podemos MPs, an act that deeply offends the morals, ethics and interests of the Mozambican people who voted for the VM7 [Venâncio Mondlane]/Podemos duo in the confidence that they would find their interlocutors differentiated.” he added, recognising that all means of reversing the situation have been “exhausted”, but “hoping” that this position will lead Forquilha to “refrain from carrying out acts” that, according to the pre-election agreement, “inhibit him due to illegitimacy”.

The results promulgated by the Constitutional Council (CC) on the 23rd point to Podemos as the new largest opposition party in Mozambique in the next parliament, whose swearing-in ceremony is expected to take place on 13 January, 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, which it won in the 2019 legislative elections, to 28 parliamentarians.

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

In the presidential elections, the CC proclaimed Daniel Chapo, the candidate supported by Frelimo, as the winner, with 65.17% of the votes. Frelimo, which retained its parliamentary majority, was also declared victorious in the general elections on 9 October.

Chapo’s election has been 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 CC only obtained 24% of the votes but claims victory – in protests demanding the “restoration of electoral truth”, with barricades, looting and clashes with the police, who have been firing shots in an attempt to demobilise, with almost 300 people reported dead and more than 500 people shot.

Source: Lusa