Mozambique’s electoral commission announced that Daniel Chapo, the new leader of the long-ruling Frelimo liberation party, won the country’s presidential election in a vote marred by irregularities and the murder of two advisers to his leading rival.
Authorities said Chapo, whose party has ruled Mozambique since independence in 1975, secured 70.6 per cent of the vote in a result analyst Borges Nhamirre, a researcher for the non-profit Institute of Security Studies, called “clearly fabricated.”
“This was a rigged election — the results that were announced do not reflect what we saw at the polls, and the big question is what happens next,” he told the Financial Times.
Chapo is poised to replace Filipe Nyusi, who has served the maximum two terms as president of the gas-rich southern African country.
Chapo, a 47-year-old one-time radio broadcaster, has said he will prioritize stamping out a northern insurgency, which has stalled a $20bn gas project by TotalEnergies on which the country of around 35mn has pinned its growth hopes.
Chapo’s main rival, the popular independent candidate Venâncio Mondlane, has alleged massive electoral fraud, saying his own tabulation showed him winning the election.
On Thursday, the electoral body gave Mondlane only 20.3 per cent of the vote, putting him ahead of the traditional opposition party Renamo, which scored 5.8 per cent, according to the official tally.
Mondlane’s ability to challenge the result has been hit by the death of his lawyer, Elvino Dias, who was gunned down on the streets of the capital Maputo on Saturday morning, along with the spokesperson for the Podemos party, which had backed Mondlane.
The extent of the irregularities prompted the European Union observer mission to release an uncharacteristically blunt statement this week, saying there was evidence of “irregularities during counting and unjustified alteration of election results at polling station and district level.”
Nhamirre said Frelimo could ignore global criticism of the electoral process, but that wide domestic civil dissent could follow. Many young people are believed to have voted for Mondlane in a country with a median age of 17.
Analysts have warned of the risk of post-election violence after Mondlane called on his supporters to “paralyze” the country in a two-day strike on Thursday and Friday in protest at the result.
Nhamirre said people had resorted to burning tires on the outskirts of Maputo following the results, triggering a heavy-handed police response.
On Monday, police fired tear gas canisters at Mondlane and a group of journalists who were interviewing him, in scenes captured in video footage and broadcast globally.
“Unable to accept legitimate criticism of the government, police have regularly gone out and fired tear gas and in some cases live bullets,” Zenaida Machado, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the Financial Times.
Machado said the prospect of further violence remained high, given the climate of fear following Dias’s assassination. “This was just the latest in a long history of political assassinations in Mozambique. In none of these cases have either civil society or the family of the victims had closure, since there is no accountability,” she said.
Adriano Nuvunga, director of the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights in Mozambique, told the Financial Times this week that Dias’s assassination appeared to be designed to intimidate the opposition and complicate its legal challenge.
In 2020, a Maputo court convicted six police officers of murdering election observer Anastácio Matavel days before the 2019 election.