Frelimo well placed to win constitutional long con
Leading opposition party Podemos is challenging the election results, which declared Frelimo’s Daniel Chapo the winner
Kiri Rupiah
The Constitutional Council evaluating allegations of electoral fraud in Mozambique’s 9 October presidential poll is stacked in favour of the accused Frelimo ruling party, according to a leading human rights defender in the country.
The council’s five members are nominated by political parties based on their “proportional representation” in Parliament, giving Frelimo an automatic majority. And its president was reappointed for a second term this year by incumbent president and Frelimo stalwart, Filipe Nyusi.
“The constitutional council sees its mandate as that of protecting the rule of the current regime,” Professor Adriano Nuvunga, who chairs the Mozambique Human Rights Defenders Network, told The Continent at a regional activists’ meeting in Johannesburg on Thursday.
Leading opposition party Podemos – the Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique – led by Venâncio Mondlane, is challenging the election results, which declared Frelimo’s Daniel Chapo the winner with 70.67%.
The former rebel movement Renamo joined Mondlane’s challenge, and the Mozambique Democracy Movement – another political party – filed a separate lawsuit saying the election officials falsified results at polling stations and during district and provincial counts.
Last week, the council raised some optimism for the challengers when its chair, Lúcia Ribeiro, sent a terse letter to the electoral body demanding an explanation for discrepancies in vote tally within 72 hours.
But its final ruling on the validity of the overall result won’t come until the end of the month, and it’s expected to toe the Frelimo party line.
“Perhaps they will change a comma here or a heading there, but their ruling will not change anything,” Nuvunga said.
The Southern African Development Community will meet in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare at the weekend to discuss a way forward on Mozambique’s political crisis, where protests called by Mondlane are in their second month and have caused several deaths and huge financial losses.
But claims that Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa helped Frelimo rig the election, are already casting doubt on the regional bloc’s impartiality and credibility.