29 October 2009
Beira — In the results from Wednesday's Mozambican presidential election, the mayor of Beira and leader of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), Daviz Simango, is ahead in his home city - but, in the 40 voting sites visited by AIM, containing about 150 polling stations, the incumbent, and candidate of the ruling Frelimo Party, Armando Guebuza, is less than 1,500 votes behind.
In the parliamentary elections in those same 150 polling stations, the MDM is winning but only by a couple of hundred votes. These are the best results that Frelimo has ever achieved in Beira, a city long regarded as a stronghold of the opposition.
These results confirm that the vote for the former rebel movement Renamo in Beira has collapsed. Just as in last year's municipal elections, Renamo is coming a very poor third in Beira. It is paying the price for the decision by its leader, Afonso Dhlakama, to expel Simango in September 2008.
This precipitated Simango's victory in the mayoral election, where, standing as an independent, he took 62 per cent of the vote. Buoyed up by this success, he went on to create the MDM in March 2009.
The Beira results collected by AIM are as follows:
Presidential election:
Daviz Simango (MDM): 24,772 Armando Guebuza (Frelimo): 23,521 Afonso Dhlakama (Renamo): 2,586
Parliamentary election:
MDM: 21,953 Frelimo: 21,730 Renamo: 2,855
These results are provisional, and must be confirmed first by the Beira City Elections Commission, by the Sofala Provincial Elections Commission, and eventually by the National Elections Commission (CNE).
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