20 November 2008
Maputo — Electoral disaster has overtaken Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, which is set to lose all five of the municipalities that it won in the 2003 local elections.
The latest results from Wednesday's municipal elections show that Renamo has lost heavily in the coastal town of Angoche, in the northern province of Nampula. According to the results sheets posted at all 40 polling stations, and reported by Radio Mozambique, the candidate of the ruling Frelimo Party, Americo Adamugi, has unseated the incumbent mayor, Alberto Assane, winning almost twice as many votes.
The results for the mayoral elections were:
Americo Adamugi (Frelimo): 12,468 Alberto Assane (Renamo): 6,427
In the election for the municipal assembly Renamo did even worse, while the vote for PIMO (Independent Party of Mozambique) was so poor that it will almost certainly lose its one seat on the assembly. The results were as follows:
Frelimo: 12,671 Renamo: 5,862 PIMO 271
Results given earlier in the morning showed that Renamo has lost control of Mozambique Island, also in Nampula, and of Marromeu, in Sofala province. Not enough results have trickled in from the northern port of Nacala to make a firm prediction - but in the first 28 polling stations reported by the radio, the current mayor and Renamo candidate, Manuel dos Santos, was losing by a significant margin.
Perhaps the worst possible result for Renamo is in the central city of Beira, where a man expelled from Renamo, the current mayor, Daviz Simango, is coasting to victory, while Frelimo is set to become the majority party in the municipal assembly.
Simango shows that a competent and charismatic opposition candidate can win, but the current leadership of Renamo seems determined to prevent such candidates from emerging.
The latest results from Beira, from 57 of the 260 polling stations, are as follows:
Daviz Simango (Independent): 25,517 Lourenco Bulha (Frelimo): 16,230 Manuel Pereira (Renamo): 874 Antonio Romao (PDD): 548 Filipe Alfredo (Independent): 132
In the municipal assembly election, Frelimo has established a comfortable lead over Renamo, while the independent Group for Democracy in Beira (GDB) is now the third force in the city. The results for the assembly from the same 57 stations are:
Frelimo: 16,659 Renamo: 12,026 GDB: 4,924 PIMO: 1,143 PDD 839
All these results are provisional, and will only become official when they are validated by the National Elections Commission (CNE).
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