Renamo announces more mayoral candidates – Mozambique Elections

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Renamo announces more mayoral candidates – Mozambique Elections

10:01 CAT | 11 Jul 2023

Photo: Renamo Moçambique / Facebook

Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, has announced that four of its heavyweights, Venancio Mondlane, Ricardo Tomas, Antonio Muchanga and Geraldo Carvalho, are its mayoral candidates in the forthcoming municipal elections for the cities of Maputo, Tete, Matola and Beira, respectively, according to a report in Monday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Carta de Mocambique”.

All four were approved at Renamo internal elections over the weekend. All four had also tried to stand in the previous municipal elections – but had failed to read the electoral legislation carefully enough.

Three of them were defectors to Renamo from the second opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), but found that changing one’s political party is more complicated than they had imagined.

Tomas and Carvalho were not allowed to run in 2018, because they had lost their seats in the national parliament, the Assembly of the Republic. Half way through the parliamentary sitting, they had abandoned the MDM and joined Renamo, but, under the parliamentary standing orders, this shift in allegiance is punished by losing one’s seat.

A deputy can leave his original party and still remain in the Assembly – but if he joins another party, he loses his seat.

Mondlane had resigned his seat as a member of the Maputo Municipal Assembly in 2015, in order to take up a seat in parliament. This was deemed sufficient grounds to bar him from standing for mayor in 2018.

There is no such shadow over Muchanga, who is one of Renamo’s most outspoken parliamentary deputies. He came close to beating the incumbent Mayor of Matola, Calisto Cossa, of the ruling Frelimo Party in 2018. The difference between Muchanga and Cossa was less than one per cent of the vote.

Renamo must also have strong hopes of winning in Moatize, in Tete province, where Frelimo’s winning margin in 2018 was just 0.49 per cent. The Renamo candidate for Moatize is Catarina Salomao.

Renamo also came close to victory in the municipality of Monapo, in Nampula province, in 2018, when Frelimo won by a margin of 1.08 per cent. The unsuccessful Renamo candidate in 2018, Pedro Florencio, is standing again this year.

Mario Cinquenta, currently the Renamo mayor of the city of Cuamba, in the northern province of Niassa, is running for a second term of office. So is Alicora Ntutunha, elected in 2018 on the Renamo ticket as mayor of Chiure, in Cabo Delgado province.

Source: AIM