The proclamation of the election results by the Constitutional Council brought chaos to the streets in several places today, with gunshot wounds and a trail of destruction yet to be calculated.
In the centre of the Mozambican capital, chaos ensued even before the president of the Constitutional Council, Lúcia Ribeiro, finished reading the ruling, with some of the main avenues blocked by demonstrators burning tyres.
‘This makes no sense. They stole our vote,’ one of the young protesters shouted to Lusa in the middle of the avenue, amid black smoke from burning tyres and shots from the Mozambique Republic Police, who were trying to disperse the groups of demonstrators.
The clashes between the police and the demonstrators went on for several hours and the damage included at least two burnt-out bank branches and several vandalised shops, including one of the main supermarkets in the Choupal neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Maputo.
Lusa reports that 53 kilometres from Avenida de Moçambique, in the district of Boane, a police vehicle was set on fire and, 31 kilometres from Boane, a courthouse was burnt down.
This was also the case in the Maxaquene neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Maputo, where a courthouse was burnt down.
In Cumbeza, in Maputo province, a tollbooth was vandalised.
Images taken from Katembe, on the other shore of Maputo Bay, showed a city covered in black smoke in the late afternoon, the result of burning tyres at various points along the Mozambican capital’s roads that still carried the smell of tear gas.
By the end of the evening, despite the rain, some shots could still be heard from the centre of Maputo, with the capital operating at half gas since the early hours of the day when the results of the general elections of 9 October were proclaimed.
The Mozambican Constitutional Council today proclaimed Daniel Chapo, the Frelimo-backed candidate, as the winner of the election for Mozambican President, with 65.17 per cent of the votes, succeeding Filipe Nyusi in office.
The proclamation of these results by the CC confirms the victory of Daniel Chapo, a 47-year-old lawyer and current secretary-general of the ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), announced on 24 October by the National Electoral Commission (CNE), but at the time with 70.67%.
The CNE’s announcement triggered demonstrations and stoppages for almost two months, called by presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who did not recognise them, causing at least 130 deaths in clashes with the police, according to data from non-governmental organisations monitoring the process.
Venâncio Mondlane, supported by the non-parliamentary Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), had come second with 20.32 per cent, according to the CNE’s earlier announcement. In its reading of the results today, the Constitutional Council confirmed second place and awarded him 24.19 per cent of the vote.
The general elections on 9 October included the seventh presidential elections – for which the current head of state, Filipe Nyusi, who has reached the two-term limit, is no longer running – at the same time as legislative elections and elections for provincial assemblies and governors.
