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Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, has chosen the mayor of Quelimane, Manuel de Araujo, as its candidate for governor of the central province of Zambezia in the provincial elections scheduled for 9 October.
According to the electronic paper “Jornal Txopela”, published in Quelimane, Renamo has confirmed that Araujo was elected overwhelmingly in an internal party meeting.
Araujo won 86 votes, while a former Renamo guerrilla, Maria Rita, won just eight votes. A third candidate, a Renamo parliamentary deputy, Ines Martins, only took one vote (presumably her own).
Araujo was not present at the meeting which elected him, since he was on one of his frequent trips abroad.
The election confirms the enormous popularity that Araujo enjoys among Renamo members in Zambezia.
He has been mayor of Quelimane since a by-election in 2011, when he was elected on the ticket of the second opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM).
He was re-elected, again for the MDM, in the nationwide municipal elections of 2013. But Araujo then switched his allegiance from the MDM to Renamo, and was reelected mayor of Quelimane in 2018 and again in 2023.
He has been mentioned as a possible future leader of Renamo, but at the Renamo Congress earlier this month, he refused to campaign against the incumbent leader, Ossufo Momade. He is thus in a position to build a coalition among both supporters and opponents of Momade, paving the way for a Renamo leadership bid in perhaps 2028.
Even if he is not elected governor in October, Araujo will remain mayor of Quelimane for the next five years.
Meanwhile, Raul Novinte, the former mayor of Nacala port, has declared that he no longer trusts Renamo, the party on whose ticket he was elected in 2018.
Cited in Thursday’s issue of the independent daily “O Pais”, Novinte said he intends to join a new party that Venancio Mondlane, the Renamo candidate for mayor of Maputo in last year’s municipal elections, is likely to set up in the near future.
Mondlane had wanted to run against Ossufo Momade at the Renamo Congress, but he was prevented from attending the Congress. He is now collecting the 10,000 supporting signatures from registered voters that he needs to launch a bid for the presidency as an independent candidate.
“Next week, or within a matter of days, you will know what party Venancio Mondlane is launching”, Novinte said. “You will hear the announcement of the official candidature at the National Elections Commission (CNE), and the heads of the lists of our candidates for each of the provinces will also be known”.
These statements came a few days after Novinte met with the population of Nacala to denounce Renamo as an anti-democratic party, and to urge the public to vote for Mondlane in the presidential election.
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