Africa-Press – Mozambique. Renamo, Mozambique’s largest opposition party, will hold its last march of the year in Maputo on Saturday against the announced results of the local elections, after some 40 protests, Venâncio Mondlane, the candidate for the capital of Mozambique’s largest opposition party, announced on Tuesday.
“The marches don’t stop. We’re going to hold the last march of 2023 next Saturday because, as you know, then we have the festivities,” said Venâncio Mondlane, the candidate of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), shortly after filing an extraordinary appeal to annul the ruling validating the local elections in Maputo.
The party counts around 40 marches held shortly after voting day for the sixth Mozambican local elections, on 11 October, initially to celebrate the victory that had not yet been announced and then to contest the results released by the National Electoral Commission (CNE), which gave victory to the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo, in power) in 64 municipalities.
The Renamo candidate, who continues to claim to be an “elected mayor” in the capital Maputo, invites “everyone” to the “big march”, which starts on Saturday morning, with the conviction that all the marches organised by the party have been worthwhile.
“Because of our marches, some institutions that, supposedly, in other circumstances would never have spoken out, have spoken out,” said Venâncio Mondlane, mentioning, among others, the Supreme Court, the Mozambique Bar Association, the Catholic and Anglican Churches.
The October ballot in Mozambique was strongly contested by the opposition and civil society, who denounced an alleged “mega-fraud” and, as a result, demonstrations were held all over the country to repudiate the results, culminating in some cases in violence.
Renamo 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 Electoral Commission for alleged “falsification and manipulation of results”, as well as against the judges of the Constitutional Council (CC).
On 24 November, the CC, the final court of appeal in electoral processes in Mozambique, proclaimed Frelimo, the ruling party, the winner of the municipal elections in 56 municipalities, including Maputo, against the previous 64 announced by the CNE, with Renamo going from none to four, and ordered repeat elections in another four.
The day after the elections, Venâncio Mondlane guaranteed that he had won the vote in the capital, with 55 % of the votes, through the parallel count carried out on the basis of 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 awarded to the ruling party in the capital by the CNE.
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