15 November 2008
Beira — Edson Macuacua, the Central Committee Secretary for Mobilisation and Propaganda of Mozambique's ruling Frelimo Party, has categorically denied claims that Frelimo bribed three prominent opponents of the mayor of Beira, Daviz Simango.
Simango was expelled from the main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, in September, and is running as an independent candidate in the municipal elections. This has split Renamo in Beira, with the local leadership of the party opposing Simango, but the grass roots membership - judging by the large attendance at his rallies - supporting him.
On Friday morning the spokesperson for the Simango campaign, Geraldo Carvalho, displayed a poor quality video of the Renamo Beira city political delegate, Faque Inacio Ferreira. In it, Ferreira appears to be admitting that he, the Renamo Sofala provincial delegate, Fernando Mbararano, and a former brigadier in the Renamo army, Lucas Machava, have all taken money from Frelimo in order to destabilize Simango's campaign.
Macuacua denied the authenticity of the video and told AIM that this sort of operation was predictable given that, in his view, Frelimo and its mayoral candidate, Lourenco Bulha, "are the favourites to win this election".
Simango's supporter "are increasingly disoriented and disorganised", said Macuacua. "They've been weakened because the correlation of forces on the ground shows that Frelimo and its candidate hold the advantage. So all they can do is resort to Machiavellian tactics".
Macuacua argued that "the citizens of Beira feel injured and frustrated by the contradictory governance that has characterized the term of office of the current mayor. So there's a great deal of euphoria and enthusiasm about voting for Lourenco Bulha, and that is giving Simango's group sleepless nights. He used to be thought the favourite, but now they publicly recognise that things aren't as favourable for them as they imagined at the start".
The video shown by Carvalho appears to have been taken by a mobile phone, but Carvalho refused to say how he had acquired it, or when it had been taken. Faque Ferreira apparently speaks of accepting money, but he does not say how much was involved, nor name the person who supposedly gave it to him.
"We always said that these three members of Renamo were the ones behind the removal of Simango as Renamo candidate for mayor", said Carvalho. "Perhaps it was because of this money".
Carvalho also accused Frelimo of preparing electoral fraud by having polling station staff deliberately annul votes cast for Simango. This is entirely possible - all a dishonest person counting the votes has to do is surreptitiously add a mark to the ballot paper so that it looks as if the voter has voted for two candidates and the vote is therefore invalid.
This is known to have happened before, notably in the Mocimboa da Praia by-election of 2005.
However, this time around such tricks will be more difficult because a large number of domestic and foreign observers will be watching the Beira polling stations. Furthermore when large numbers of ballot papers are fraudulently invalidated, this leads to statistical anomalies which are easily detected.
Carvalho claimed that Frelimo members were enticing polling station staff currently being trained to commit fraud, but "we, the citizens of Beira, and the polling station monitors for the independent candidate will not allow this to happen".
"Anyone who tries to intimidate us by using the police will be declaring war, because we are prepared to die at the polling stations", he declared melodramatically.
"If they try to cut off the power, in order to switch the ballot boxes, then there will de deaths", threatened Carvalho. "We are not inciting violence, but we know what the strategy is".
In fact, voting is taking place entirely during the hours of daylight (07.00 to 18.00), so power cuts are irrelevant. And polling stations in the semi-rural parts of Beira do not have electricity anyway. Votes in such places are counted by oil lamp and candlelight.
But the major obstacle to switching ballot boxes is that the boxes are sealed and the seals have numbers. If, when the boxes are opened to count the votes, the seals have different numbers to the ones publicly attached at the start of the day, then it is clear that some dirty tricks have been played. But nothing of the sort has ever been reported in the entire history of Mozambican elections.
Read comments. Write your own.
Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
It is clear that frelimo is the party facing major problems with Daviz Simango, individual candidate for the municipality of Beira. Any attempt to destabilize this candidates campaign seem not to be working as the community stays behind him and his promises of a better future. No bribe, promises or desistabilization techniques will apply this time.
Anyway it seems that Frelimo is facing problems with their own candidate as well, as this is highly associated with a crime, involving the sale of plots of land, which is prohibited in Mozambique. Does not this communicate that this candidate is the door… [Read Full Text]