Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the country’s largest opposition party, this Friday called for the “paralysation” of Maputo on Monday, in protest at the results of the local elections, continuing to claim victory in the capital and demanding “electoral justice”.
“Stay at home. Nobody goes to work. Everything must be closed,” reads the message that Renamo candidate for Maputo mayor, Venâncio Mondlane, released today, reiterating that the party did not accept the “theft of the people’s votes” in the October 11th local elections.
On November 28, in one of the dozens of marches in Maputo contesting the announced results, hundreds of Renamo supporters once again said that the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) “will not govern” the capital, with Venâncio Mondlane calling for the capital to be brought to a halt.
“The time has come for the people to prove that it is the people who are in power,” Mondlane told a crowd at the end of the first protest march in the capital after the announcement of the electoral results by the Constitutional Council (CC), four days earlier.
“Let’s all agree to stop everything in this city for two days,” he said at the time, in an appeal to all professional classes, saying it was necessary to “paralyse the economy” to contest the “fraud” in the local elections and “return the victory to the people.”
“The Constitution itself allows us the right to resist. If there are illegal orders, the people have the right to resist,” Mondlane said.
“We have already marched a lot, we have marched too much. Now the time has come to paralyse the economy,” warned the man who continues to insist he is the “elected mayor” of the capital.
Renamo has already filed a criminal complaint with the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) against the directors of the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE) and the National Elections Commission (CNE), for alleged “falsification and manipulation of results” , as well as against the counsellor judges of the Constitutional Council.
The CC, the last instance of appeal in electoral processes in Mozambique, declared on 24 November that Frelimo, the party in power, won the municipal elections in 56 municipalities, including Maputo, against the previous 64 announced by the CNE, with Renamo moving from none for four, and ordered elections to be repeated in another four.
The day after the elections, Venâncio Mondlane guaranteed that he had won the ballot in the capital, with 55% of the votes, through a parallel count carried out based on all the original notices and minutes from the polling stations.
The CC proclaimed Frelimo the winner of the local elections in Maputo, but cut almost 30,000 votes that had previously been attributed to the ruling party in the capital by the CNE.
“The CC has no power to change results. The only power it has is to validate the elections. It can say that the processes were done well or poorly, but it has no power to change results and take 30,000 from here and put 30,000 there,” Mondlane indicated.
According to the CC ruling, Frelimo maintained its victory, but with 206,333 votes and 37 mandates. Razaque Manhique, head of the Frelimo list, was proclaimed new mayor of Maputo, but on October 26, the CNE had attributed the victory to Frelimo with 234,406 votes and 43 mandates. This difference in votes was attributed by the CC to Renamo, but was insufficient to deprive the Frelimo candidate of victory.
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