Initial results point to Frelimo victory

Maputo, 10 Oct (AIM) – The initial polling station results that AIM has obtained from Wednesday’s presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections point to a victory for the ruling Frelimo Party and its presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo.

The results are all preliminary and require confirmation by the election management bodies.

Nonetheless, these preliminary results point a picture across the country of a Frelimo victory, but not on the gigantic scale that Frelimo had boasted of prior to the elections. It seems that Frelimo may fall short of the two thirds majority in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, that it won in the previous general elections in 2019.

Coming second, with perhaps 20-30 per cent of the vote is the independent presidential candidate, Venancio Mondlane, and the main force supporting him, the Party of Optimists for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos).

The rise of Venancio Mondlane has destroyed the traditional opposition parties, Renamo and the MDM (Mozambique Democratic Movement), who seem likely to lose most of their parliamentary seats.

Mondlane was once a senior figure in Renamo, and in last year’s municipal elections he was the Renamo candidate for Mayor of Maputo. Parallel vote counts suggest that Mondlane won in Maputo, and that the official results, giving victory to Frelimo, were fraudulent.

Mondlane intended to challenge Renamo leader Ossufo Momade for the Presidency of the party, but Momade’s supporters refused to allow Mondlane to attend the Renamo Congress, held in May, in the central municipality of Alto Molocue.

So Mondlane resigned from Renamo, and announced his intention of running in the presidential election as an independent. A number of minor, extra-parliamentary parties opted to support him, of which the most significant is Podemos.

Now Renamo is ruined, and Momade looks unlikely to hold onto his position as party leader. His role as leader of the opposition (and the state subsidy that goes with it), will almost certainly be taken by Mondlane.

The MDM is in an even worse state, but it still controls its traditional stronghold of the central city of Beira.

The preliminary results so far available also point to a poor turnout of less than 50 per cent of the registered voters.

In the central city of Quelimane, in polling station number 080001-01, for example, only 331 out of the 800 registered voters cast their ballots. Chapo won with 153 votes, followed by Mondlane with 148. Ossufo Momade had only 14 votes, and the MDM’s Lutero Simango just five votes.

In the parliamentary election at the same polling station, Frelimo took 136 votes, Podemos 91, Renamo 73 and the MDM only seven.

In polling station 980180-08, in the northern city of Nampula, Mondlane won with 172 votes, followed by Chapo with 147, Momade with 18, and Simango with nine.

In the central city of Chimoio, according to a report on the independent television station, “TV Sucesso”, in 130 polling stations, Mondlane was leading with about 25,000 votes, followed by Chapo with more than 20,000. There were 778 votes cast for Simango and 1,239 for Momade.

There are still far too few polling station results available to draw any firm conclusions. But the overall trend seems clear.

No doubt Renamo will blame its poor showing on fraud – and while there was undoubtedly significant fraud in favor of Frelimo in these elections, it is not enough to explain the Renamo collapse.

The results must now be collated on a district by district basis, and then as provincial results by Monday. Only then will the National Elections Commission (CNE) publish national results.

That is not the end of the story. The Constitutional Council, Mozambique’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law, must then validate and proclaim the results.

The electoral law does not set any deadline for the Council to take its decision.
(AIM)
Pf/ (640)