Mozambique Opposition Rejects Poll Results as Nyusi Takes Lead
Mozambique Opposition Rejects Poll Results as Nyusi Takes Lead
(Bloomberg) -- Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, said it rejects the result of the country’s general elections, held on Oct. 15, claiming in the capital that the contest was marred by fraud.
President Filipe Nyusi had 69% of the vote with nearly a third counted, according to preliminary results posted to the electoral commission’s website. Ossufo Momade, leader of Mozambican National Resistance, as the opposition is formally known, had 26%. The outcome could be key to more than $50 billion in natural gas projects that companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Total SA plan in the far north of the country.
“There was a lot of rigging, a lot of fraud in these elections and we, Renamo, cannot accept these kind of elections,” Andre Joaquim Magibire, secretary general of the party, told reporters in Maputo Saturday. “We are asking for a repetition of these elections.”
Nyusi’s Mozambique Liberation Front, known as Frelimo, has been in power since independence from Portugal in 1975, and has won every national election since the first vote in 1994. Observers from the European Union and the U.S. also noted some concerns about the elections.
Renamo, the rebel group that fought a 16-year civil war that ended in 1992 against Frelimo, has often disputed elections before, also claiming fraud, and this has at times led to violence. The parties’ leaders signed a new peace deal in August meant to permanently end hostilities, and this week’s vote was seen as a test of whether the deal would hold. Frelimo “is clearly demonstrating it does not want peace” and has violated the accord, Magibire said.
Momade has struggled to consolidate control over Renamo since becoming leader in 2018 following the death of its head for almost four decades, Afonso Dhlakama. What looks to be a much-bigger-than-expected win for Frelimo could further threaten his hold on the party, which a militant faction had already challenged, according to Domingos do Rosário, professor of political science at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo.
“Now it all depends on Renamo’s ability to rebuild,” he said. “And then there will be many difficulties.”
International observer missions monitoring the campaign and voting, including the Southern African Development Community and the African Union, said the process was generally peaceful and orderly while raising concerns about voter registration disputes. But the EU and U.S. monitors were more critical.
“The U.S. Embassy has significant concerns regarding problems and irregularities that may impact perceptions of the integrity of the electoral process,” it said in a statement Friday, including discrepancies between registered voters and national census results in two provinces. “Several incidents of serious violence and intimidation, including the assassination of a civil society leader in the run-up to election day, were disturbing and may have contributed to public doubts about a safe and fair election environment.”
EU observers witnessed four cases of ballot-box stuffing and an “unlevel playing field was evident throughout the campaign,” its observer mission said Thursday.
To contact the reporters on this story: Matthew Hill in Maputo at mhill58@bloomberg.net;Borges Nhamire in Maputo at bnhamire@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Blaise Robinson at brobinson58@bloomberg.net, John Viljoen, Thomas Mulier
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.