The leader of the Portuguese Chega party, André Ventura, has argued that Portugal should not recognise Daniel Chapo as the new President of Mozambique until the suspicions of fraud in the results of the 9 October general elections have been dispelled.
Ventura considered it ‘a bad solution’ for the country to be represented at Chapo’s inauguration on Wednesday 15 January by the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, Paulo Rangel.
‘Nothing prevents Portugal from being present, but if someone from the Portuguese government is going to be at the ceremony, it must be made clear in Mozambique and to Mozambicans that what has happened is an attack on freedom, that we should not recognise this President until we are sure of what has happened,’ he said.
The president of Chega said that ‘the Portuguese state has to maintain relations with Mozambique because it is one of the closest states and a former Portuguese colony’, but he considered that it should ‘be firm with the new government even if this implies a certain lightness’ in relations between the two countries.
‘Mozambique, at the moment, is corrupt, living in violence and political swindling. Portugal shouldn’t be associated with that, so if Paulo Rangel goes there, I hope that when he’s with the Portuguese, Mozambican and international press he can say that,’ he defended.
André Ventura compared the situation in Mozambique to what happened in Venezuela and considered that ‘there is a group of people who have been in power for years, also fuelled by the Portuguese political class, who don’t want to leave power under any pretext, they want to stay at all costs,’ he said.
‘It has to be said that Frelimo was fuelled by the Portuguese political class, whether the PS, the PSD or the PCP, for many years,’ he added.
On Friday 10 January, the Portuguese Parliament approved a recommendation to the government not to recognise the results of the general elections in Mozambique ‘due to the serious irregularities and fraud that have been denounced and documented.’
Recently, the President of the Portuguese Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, confirmed that he had received a formal invitation from the outgoing President, Filipe Nyusi, to take part in the ceremony scheduled for 15 January in Maputo, but his presence at the event has not yet been officially confirmed.
Meanwhile, on Monday 13 January, it was confirmed that Portugal will be represented at Daniel Chapo’s inauguration by Minister of State and Foreign Affairs Paulo Rangel, who arrives in Maputo on Wednesday morning.
Despite the challenges, Daniel Chapo, the Frelimo candidate, was declared the winner by the Constitutional Council, with 65.17 per cent of the votes.