Mozambique: 'Portugal Should Be Firm With the Mozambican Government"

President-elect Daniel Chapo will be inaugurated after the contested elections in October 2024. Protests against the results continue, with a growing daily death toll.

The president of the party of the Portuguese far-right, Chega, André Ventura, made a sharp speech on Portugal’s position towards Chapo’s investiture. He said that Portugal and the European Union should take the same line towards Mozambique as they did towards Venezuela: they should not recognise the election results and should boycott the investiture.

“We should be firm with the government of Mozambique even if this implies some lessening in our relation”, said Ventura. “Right now, Mozambique is corruption. Mozambique now is violence. Mozambique now is a political swindle. Portugal should not be associated with this."

Ventura says that whoever represents Portugal in Chapo’s investiture “should make it clear that what happened in Mozambique is an attack on freedom and that Portugal should not recognise Daniel Chapo”.

“The difference between what happened in Mozambique and in Venezuela in very slim. The difference is that one is in Africa and the other in America. We tend to give greater value to what happens in South America than to what happens in Africa”

According to Ventura, what happens in Moçambique is that “there is a group of people linked to power over many years, nourished by the Portuguese political class. It must be said that Frelimo has been nourished by our political class, the Socialist Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party, for many years. It wants to stay in power at any cost”.

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