Preliminary counts indicate that Renamo and Podemos will have similar numbers of members of parliament; the one with the most seats will become the official opposition. In a letter published Monday (14 October) Podemos denounced an alleged plan between Frelimo and Renamo to prevent Podemos from being declared the winner, and even “preventing it from occupying second place in these general elections”.
According to Podemos, there are “higher orders”, addressed to the National Elections Commission (CNE), the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE) and the Constitutional Council (CC), to ensure that the district and provincial elections commissions prevent Podemos and its presidential candidate from being proclaimed victorious, and also forbidden from occupying second position.
According to Podemos there are three goals:
+ To ensure that Frelimo and its candidate win with more than 50% of the votes, thus guaranteeing their parliamentary supremacy.
+ To ensure that Renamo, whose leader has political agreements with Frelimo according to Podemos, be accommodated in second place and thus Momade keeps his status as leader of the opposition.
+ To ensure that Frelimo and Renamo keep their members of the National Elections Commission and of the Constitutional Council, who Podemos accuses of being accomplices in the electoral fraud, remain in that position.
The Podemos document adds that Frelimo and its President want to ensure that Podemos “won’t be able to do anything except sing and march through the streets until they get tired because the Mozambique Republic Police (PRM) are ready to use disproportionate force to dissuade and neutralise any demonstration repudiating the fraudulent alteration of the results of Podemos and its presidential candidate”.
The Podemos letter says that the intermediate results published by the district elections commissions do not correspond to the electoral truth expressed at the ballot box.
“These results are adulterated and corrupted and so are false, and we distance ourselves from them”.
