Mozambique: Residents celebrate Renamo local election victory in Quelimane – Watch

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Mozambique: Residents celebrate Renamo local election victory in Quelimane – Watch

9:44 CAT | 24 Nov 2023

Photo: Diário da Zambezia

Thousands of people took to the streets on Friday in Quelimane, the capital of the Mozambican province of Zambézia, to celebrate the proclamation of Manuel de Araújo as local mayor by Renamo, after the Constitutional Council reversed the victory awarded to Frelimo.

According to the ruling proclaiming the results of the local elections held in 65 municipalities on 11 October, which was unanimously approved and read out today by the president of the Constitutional Council (CC), Counsellor Judge Lúcia Ribeiro, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, the largest opposition party) won the election in Quelimane with 39,021 votes and 23 seats.

“The results were the outcome of the verification of the data, in accordance with the evidence produced,” reads the judgement of the CC, final electoral appeal body responsible for proclaiming the election results.

This announcement led thousands of people to celebrate in the streets of Quelimane late in the morning.

On 26 October, Mozambique’s National Electoral Commission (CNE), after carrying out the intermediate and general tabulation, had awarded victory in Quelimane to the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), with 38,595 votes and 23 seats, a result that the CC reduced, after checking the documentation, to 35,973 and 22 seats.

The result allowed Manuel de Araújo to be re-elected as mayor of Quelimane, after several weeks of protests in the city against the previously announced results, involving thousands of people and supporters of the Renamo candidate.

Quelimane was one of four municipalities where the CC reversed the initial results, all from Frelimo to Renamo, as well as Alto Molócuè, also in Zambézia province, Vilankulo, in Inhambane, and Chiúre, in Cabo Delgado.

In Nampula province, the CC ordered the vote to be partially repeated in the municipalities of Nacala Porto and in Zambézia province in the municipalities of Milange and Gurué, while in Marromeu, Sofala province, the vote will have to be repeated completely due to various irregularities.

Thus, Frelimo was proclaimed the winner in 56 municipalities, against the previous 64, with the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) remaining the winner in Beira, the capital of Sofala province.

According to the judgement, which represents the final decision of the municipal election process, the CC received and decided on 40 appeals, filed in 32 of the 65 municipalities. Some were rejected due to problems of being out of time, or because they had not been appealed at first instance.

The CC also received two electoral appeals from Renamo and one from Nova Democracia to annul the elections and recount the votes and referred several cases to the public prosecutor’s office “for the appropriate purposes”.

A total of 4,817,702 voters were registered to vote in these sixth local elections and 1,486 polling stations were set up, with 6,875 ballot boxes.

The streets of some Mozambican cities have been taken over by consecutive demonstrations by the opposition against what they consider to have been a “mega-fraud” in the local elections process and the results announced by the CNE, which have also been strongly criticised by civil society and non-governmental organisations.

Renamo, which for the first time went to the polls completely demilitarised and which in the previous 53 municipalities (12 new municipalities were created this year) was leading in eight, was left without any municipality in the first announcement made by the CNE, despite claiming victory in the country’s largest cities, based on the original minutes and notices of polling stations, having appealed to the CC, the last instance of appeal in the electoral process.

Source: Lusa