Protests in Mozambique after Ruling Party Candidate is Declared Winner of Presidential Election
Mozambique's electoral commission says Frelimo’s Daniel Chapo won the October 9 vote by more than 70 percent.
Thousands in Mozambique are taking to the streets in demonstrations against the presidential election results announced today. Per the country’s electoral commission, the candidate of the ruling Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Frelimo), Daniel Chapo, won the October 9 election with over 70 percent of the vote, while independent candidate and main opposition Venacio Mondlane came in a distant second with just over 20 percent.
Forty-seven-year-old Chapo is set to become the Southern African country’s fifth president and will continue Frelimo’s uninterrupted power since the country’s 1975 independence. “Election in Mozambique really is only to tick the box,” activist and director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights, Adrian Nuvunga, said today after the results were announced. “They are sham elections, they are charades and Frelimo just organize them for the sake of democratic presentability. It is not meant for the people to speak and the will of the people to be respected.”
The voting and vote counting process was reportedly marred by irregularities, with opposition alleging rigging at the polls and external observers casting doubts over the validity of the electoral commission’s vote counting and aggregation process. Also heightening tensions were the killings of Elvino Dias, Mondlane’s lawyer, and Paulo Gambe,a parliamentary candidate for the Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique, a small, recently created opposition party backing Mondlane’s presidential bid.
Dias and Gambe were killed by armed men who stormed their car and shot them with a hail of bullets. On Monday, protests against their deaths, as well as against early reports of Frelimo leading in the polls, were broken up by the police. Yesterday, thousands poured onto the streets of Maputo for Dias’ funeral.
While the country had been in a nervous calm in anticipation of today’s announcement, videos shared online show that thousands of people are protesting against the results. On X, Journalist Alexandre Nhampossa shared juxtaposing images of Frelimo celebrating the results and videos of “protesters destroying flags and other objects of the ruling party.” In a separate post, Nhampossa shared videos and reported that “police are already firing tear gas to prevent the movement.”
The general dissatisfaction with the election results is apparent in many posts online, with multiple X users wondering how Frelim won opposition stronghold provinces like Sofala. “Is this saying that our people love suffering, 10 years of suffering, and thinking that we voted with these numbers for Frelimo?” @Dungonuvunga wrote in an X post. “It's an insult.”
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