Maputo, 30 Sep (AIM) – Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, has denied claims that its mayoral candidate in the southern town of Vilanculo, Joaquim Quinito Vilanculo, has defected to the ruling Frelimo Party.
Since the start of the municipal election campaign on Tuesday, a claim has circulated, first in social media, and then in the publicly owned television channel TVM, that Quinito Vilanculo had abandoned Renamo and embraced the Frelimo campaign.
Images were published showing a man, supposedly Quinito Vilanculo, removing a Renamo T-shirt, but his face could not be seen. Alongside were undoubted photos of the Renamo candidate with the caption “Head of the Renamo list renounces his candidacy, and announces his support for Frelimo”.
Quinito Vilanculo is even alleged to have declared “Mozambique is Frelimo, don’t you know that?”
But the fact-checking unit in the Mozambican chapter of the regional press freedom body, MISA (Media Institute of Southern Africa), looked more closely at this story and found it to be false.
The photographs have been manipulated. The man removing the Renamo T-shirt in the first photograph is not Quinito Vilanculo, but Tomas Zacarias, who was the Renamo candidate for mayor in 2008.
The genuine photos of Vilanculo show him wearing the Renamo T-shirt, and holding a Renamo flag.
Tomas Zacarias has indeed joined Frelimo, and somebody had, with considerable success, tried to confuse this former Renamo mayoral candidate with the current one. A volley of abuse was directed against Vilanculo on social media, comparing him with Judas Iscariot, and declaring that he had “infiltrated” Renamo in order to destabilize it.
When MISA contacted Vinankulo on Thursday he dismissed the story of his switch from Renamo to Frelimo as completely false.
“It’s not true. They’re trying to dirty my image”, he said. “We are taking Renamo to power, and I’m not going to resign”.
(AIM)
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