Africa-Press – Mozambique. Venâncio Mondlane, the head of list in Maputo city for Renamo, the largest opposition party in Mozambique, on Thursday claimed victory in the local elections in the Mozambican capital, currently held by Frelimo.
“This victory is not mine, but ours. It is a powerful reminder that when we come together in pursuit of a common goal, we are capable of achieving extraordinary things,” Mondlane says in a statement entitled “Maputo city rescued”.
Despite this claim, there continues to be no official statement on the results of the elections by the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE) or the National Elections Commission (CNE).
“I am here to represent you, your voices and concerns. You trusted me to lead, and I promise I will not take that trust lightly. I will work tirelessly to make our hopes and dreams come true, to create a better place for all of us,” Mondlane’s statement continues.
Meanwhile, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) has already announced that it will hold a procession through the capital this afternoon, “in gratitude to the citizens” for voting.
The municipal elections on October 11th, the sixth in the country, were marked in the capital by the failure to put forward the current president of the Municipal Council of the City of Maputo, the ‘veteran’ Eneias Comiche, 84 years old, elected by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo).
The absence from the electoral campaign of the economist with a long political CV who, in addition to being a mayor, has also been a minister and governor of the central bank, left everything open for the electoral dispute in the capital.
In these elections, Frelimo presented Razaque Manhique as head of the list, a 41-year-old jurist from the grassroots of the party in power. He was first secretary of the Frelimo committee in the City of Maputo, vice-president of the Maputo Municipal Assembly and head of the Frelimo bench in the Maputo Municipal Assembly.
Venâncio Mondlane, 49 years old, is a forestry engineer and a deputy in parliament, being classified by his supporters as VM7 – the CR7 of Mozambican politics, in an allusion to soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo.
Mondlane is once again trying to “rescue Maputo”, as his slogan puts it, after being defeated in the 2018 ballot with 36.43% of the votes, against 56.95% for the Frelimo candidate.
Mondlane departed the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), the country’s third-largest parliamentary party, for Renamo in 2018, in one of several unprecedented candidate movements in local elections that year.
The sixth local elections in Mozambique took place in 65 municipalities across the country on Wednesday, with the polls closing at 6:00 p.m. local time.
Just over 4.8 million voters were eligible to vote, with Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE) spokesperson Regina Matsinhe assuring that it was a “vote was orderly and peaceful”, although there were some “incidences” during the day.
STAE does not provide concrete deadlines for publishing results, other than those set out in legislation, which provides for during the night a partial count at each voting table, which can have up to 800 voters, with the respective notice published at the door, followed by the intermediate municipal count, at the district level, within a period of up to three days after the vote, and then, within five days, the centralization of the results by province.
The National Elections Commission then has up to 15 days after the vote to publish the final results.
“The truth is that it is necessary to meet the deadlines,” the STAE reiterated to Lusa.
Mozambican voters were asked to choose 65 new presidents of municipal councils elected to the municipal assemblies, including 12 new municipalities approved by the Council of Ministers in October 2022, which join 53 already existing ones, for a total of 1,747 members to be elected.
In the 2018 local elections, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo, in power) won 44 of the 53 local councils and the opposition just nine, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) in eight and the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) in one.
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