Maputo — The delegation of Mozambique's main opposition party, Renamo, in the central province of Zambezia, has announced a short list of three potential candidates for mayor of the provincial capital, Quelimane, in the municipal elections scheduled for 11 October.

The current mayor of Quelimane, Manuel de Araujo, published the short list on Thursday on his Facebook page.

Araujo hopes to stand for a further term of office as mayor, a post he has held since 2011.

Araujo was a Renamo deputy in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic from 2004 to 2009. But he then defected from Renamo to the second opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), and it was as the MDM candidate that he fought and won a mayoral by-election in Quelimane in 2011.

He was re-elected mayor, again on the MDM ticket, in 2013. The MDM wanted to run him as its candidate again in the 2018 municipal elections. Instead, Araujo went back to Renamo, and won the 2018 election as the Renamo candidate.

This time there is no guarantee that Araujo will be the candidate. He is challenged by Latifo Xarifo, the current Renamo district political delegate in Quelimane, and a former deputy in the Assembly of the Republic.

The third name on the short list is Ines Martins, currently a parliamentary deputy and a former chairperson of the parliamentary Commission on International Relations. She has also been chairperson of the Renamo Women's League.

Mayors are no longer directly elected. Instead the voters elect members of the municipal assembly. Whoever heads the party list with the largest number of seats in the Assembly will become the mayor.