Daniel Chapo
The new President of Mozambique will be Daniel Chapo, from the governing Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), after he was declared to have attracted 70% of votes cast, in the country’s elections.
Chapo’s declared 70.7% was by a wide margin, above the 50% that candidates need to avoid a second run off. Former disc jocky, Venancio Mondlane, was declared second, on 20.3% of votes.
The declaration of the votes does not however seem to have settled the argument. The opposition was quick to contest the declared results, with election observers claiming the count to have been deliberately distorted.
There were claims of stuffing of ballots from Catholic Church Bishops, and European Union (EU) observers, said they had witnessed “irregularities during counting and unjustified alteration of election results.”
Mondlane has called for protests, declaring that “the time has come for the people to take power and say that we now want to change the history of this country. There won’t be enough bullets for everyone, there won’t be teargas for everyone, there won’t be enough armoured vehicles.”
The election conflict has already cost two lives. Last Saturday, gunmen murdered two members of the opposition, Elvino Dias, a lawyer, who was preparing a challenge against the declared election results, and Paulo Guambe, from the Podemos party. It is not yet known who the murderers were.
FRELIMO was founded in exile in Tanzania, in 1962, as a liberation movement, to fight for indepence from Portugal, the colonising power. Originally intending to campaign for independence peacefully, violence against nationalist groups inside Mozambique, in particular a massacre in the town of Mueda, convinced the movment’s leadership to adopt an armed struggle. In 1964, it launched its first offensive.
The movement would become a political party, and has governed Mozambique, since independence, in 1975. The planned protests will be the first major test for the declared winner.
