Venâncio Mondlane denies inciting violence

Maputo, 17 Oct (AIM) – Mozambique’s independent presidential candidate in last week’s general elections, Venancio Mondlane, has denied inciting violence against the police.

On Wednesday, Mondlane led a march in the northern city of Nampula, which degenerated into clashes between the police and his supporters.

Mondlane has now travelled to the central city of Beira, where he blamed the police for the Wednesday violence. He told reporters it was the police who attacked his supporters, and challenged the police to prove that he had encouraged his followers to throw stones at them.

The Director of Order in the Nampula police command, Gilberto Inguane, had blamed Mondlane for the clashes, but Mondlane retorted that Inguane had told “gross lies”.

Furthermore he had taken the precaution of filming the march. “Anyone who wants can just look at the video”, he said. “They will see that at no time did I tell my followers to attack the police”.

Mondlane said he is in Beira to chair meetings with the groups that supported his election campaign – Podemos (Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique) and the CAD (Democratic Alliance Coalition).

While Mondlane was meeting the Podemos members on Thursday morning, the police surrounded the Podemos office, and did not permit other supporters to approach. Mondlane assumed the police were trying to scare him.

“I didn’t come here for any march”, he said. “I’m here to meet with my political commission, of about 17 people. So what the police are doing makes no sense”.

Mondlane also told reporters he intends to appeal against the election results to the Constitutional Council, but only after the National Elections Commission (CNE) has announced the official results.

He said he is collecting the polling station results sheets (“editais”) to prove that he and Podemos won. “We are taking photocopies and we are scanning, so that we have a digital record of all the material. We are sending it, bit by bit, to Maputo, so that after the announcement of the results by the CNE, we can rapidly present our appeal to the Constitutional Council”, he declared.

Mondlane said that preparing his appeal is taking an enormous organizational and financial effort. He hoped to motivate young Mozambicans.

“We have to remain firm, we have to continue to fight using all the legally existing windows”, he stressed.

As for the summons he had received from the Attorney-General’s Office (PGR), Mondlane regarded this as intimidation “so that we don’t fight for our rights, so that we don’t fight for the restoration of the truth, so that we don’t fight to defend the will of the people. It’s all intimidation, and it has no legal basis”.

He said the general strike he has called for Monday, “is a basic right. If people don’t want to join the strike, they don’t have to. But if they do, they can. It’s just a stoppage of activities. No more, and no less than that. It doesn’t need authorization by anybody”.
(AIM)
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