17 November 2008
Beira — Mozambique's former rebel movement Renamo on Sunday announced that it is confident of winning Wednesday's municipal elections in the central city of Beira, despite the defection of many Renamo members to the independent candidate and current mayor of the city, Daviz Simango.
At a press conference closing the Renamo campaign, the party's Beira political delegate, Faque Inacio, claimed that the campaign "took place in a positive atmosphere, since the Renamo candidate (Manuel Pereira) was received in all the houses he visited without any obstacle, which means that he enjoys credibility among the electorate, despite the initial doubts as to whether he would be able to campaign in Beira".
He dismissed as untrue media reports that Pereira had been driven out of some Beira neighbourhoods by supporters of Simango. He clamed that Renamo had gone back to the suburbs concerned (such as Tchondja and Nhangau) on Saturday, "and nobody threw us out".
To anyone observing the Beira campaign, it was obvious that Pereira's motorcades were much smaller than those of either Simango or Lourenco Bulha, the candidate of the ruling Frelimo Party. Inacio dismissed this argument - he claimed that, in the cases where Pereira's opponents had achieved really large parades, most of the people taking part were adolescents under the voting age of 18.
Large numbers of cars in motorcades were irrelevant, he said, because "cars don't vote for anybody".
"We want voters", he said. "That's why we gave priority to door-to-door and farm-to-farm canvassing, and why we went from church to church and market to market".
However, these arguments are less than convincing. On the final day of campaigning, large crowds turned out at the offices of both Simango and Bulha, but there were only a dozen or so people at the Renamo office.
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