This Tuesday, 14 January, the non-governmental organisation Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CDD) submitted a complaint to the Mozambican Attorney General’s Office about an alleged bribe to the president of the Podemos party, which supported Venâncio Mondlane’s presidential candidacy, the Lusa news agency reported .
‘It’s information from people who say they are close to this operation. We came here to make the complaint to the competent institution and it should audit its public spending and assets from a certain point onwards,’ Adriano Nuvunga, director of the CDD, told the media moments after submitting the document to the Central Office for Combating Corruption (GCCC) in Maputo.
At issue is the disagreement between presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who is leading the country’s biggest ever contestation of the election results, and the party that supported him, the Optimistic People for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), until last year an extra-parliamentary political formation that is now the main opposition force in the country.
Registered in May 2019 and made up of dissidents from the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), Podemos has seen its popularity rise since announcing on 21 August that it would support Mondlane’s presidential candidacy as a result of a ‘political agreement’, shortly after Mondlane had his coalition (CAD) rejected by the Constitutional Council for ‘irregularities’.
A week ago, the president of Podemos, Albino Forquilha, admitted that there were differences in the ‘strategy of struggle’ between the party and Mondlane, defending the end of the demonstrations for dialogue, although he promised to comply with the established agreement.
Although the agreement is still in force, the relationship between the parties became tense when the party decided to take office in Parliament without Mondlane’s consent, who argues that the results were fraudulent and that the swearing-in, which was boycotted by the other two parties (Renamo and MDM), was hasty.
According to the CDD complaint, Albino Forquilha allegedly received a sum of 219 million meticals to ‘sell electoral justice.’
‘Since the payment was in kind, as we are told, it is also easy to trace,’ added Nuvunga.
Lusa contacted Podemos’ communications department, which promised a reaction at an “opportune moment”.
Podemos is the result of a dissidence by former Frelimo members who called for more ‘economic inclusion’ and left the ruling party, claiming ‘disenchantment’ and different ambitions at the time.
The results promulgated by the CC on 23 December show Podemos as the largest opposition party in Mozambique in the next parliament, with 43 seats, taking away a status that had been held by the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) since the first multiparty elections in 1994.
Of the 250 seats that make up the Assembly of the Republic, Renamo has gone from 60 deputies, which it won in the 2019 legislative elections, to 28 parliamentarians.
Frelimo, in power since independence, maintained its parliamentary majority with 171 deputies.
In the presidential elections, the CC, the final court of appeal in electoral disputes, proclaimed Daniel Chapo, the Frelimo-backed candidate, as the winner with 65.17 per cent of the vote.
Chapo’s election as Filipe Nyusi’s successor is, however, contested on the streets and the CC’s announcement has added to the chaos that the country has been experiencing since October, with pro-Mondlane demonstrators in protests demanding the ‘restoration of electoral truth’, with barricades, looting and clashes with the police.