Mozambique’s Podemos party, which supported Venâncio Mondlane’s as presidential candidate in October’s general elections, has lodged a criminal complaint against an activist, Adriano Nuvunga, for alleged defamation, days after he reported an alleged bribe to the party’s leader for it to split from Mondlane.
“It’s a criminal complaint for defamation and if Professor Adriano Nuvunga has proof of his claims he should come and prove it,” Duclesio Chico, spokesman for Podemos (full party name Optimistic People for the Development of Mozambique), told Lusa moments after submitting the complaint to the Maputo City prosecutor’s office. “We believe in the integrity of our [party] president.”
On Tuesday, the non-governmental organisation Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CDD) submitted a complaint to the Public Prosecuton Service about an alleged bribe to the Podemos leader, which had supported Mondlane’s presidential candidacy but has now defied his calls for its new members of parliament not to take up their seats.
“It’s information from people who claim to be close to this operation,” Nuvunga, the CDD’s director, told the media just moments after submitting the document to the Central Office for Combating Corruption (GCCC) in Maputo. “We came here to make the complaint to the competent institution and it will have to audit its public spending and assets from a certain point onwards.”
At issue is the disagreement between Mondlane, the presidential candidate, who is leading the biggest popular challenge to the election results ever in Mozambique, and the party that supported him in the 9 October elections, Podemos – until last year an extra-parliamentary political formation but now the main opposition force in the country.
Registered in May 2019 and made up of dissidents from the governing Frelimo party, Podemos has seen its popularity rise since announcing its support for Mondlane’s presidential candidacy on 21 August, as a result of a “political agreement”, shortly after Mondlane had his previous election coalition, CAD, rejected by the Constitutional Council for what it said were “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, calling for an end to the demonstrations in order to open 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 the consent of Mondlane, who continues to argue that the official election results were fraudulent and therefore the swearing-in, which was boycotted by the other two opposition parties (Renamo and the MDM), was hasty.
According to the CDD’s complaint, Forquilha allegedly received a sum of 219 million meticais (€3.3 million) to “sell electoral justice.”
The Podemos spokesman, however, responded that party officials “want Professor Nuvunga to provide proof of his claims.”
Podemos was set up by dissident former members of Frelimo who had been calling for more “economic inclusion” and left the governing party, claiming at the time their “disenchantment” and different ambitions.
The results promulgated by the Constitutional Council (CC) on 23 December show Podemos as the largest opposition party in the new parliament, with 43 seats, thus taking away from Renamo the status it had had since the first multiparty elections in 1994.
Of the 250 seats that make up the Assembly of the Republic, Renamo now has 28 members, down from the 60 it secured in the 2019 legislative elections.
Frelimo, which has been in power since independence almost 50 years ago, held onto its parliamentary majority, with 171 MPs.
In the presidential elections, the CC – which is the final court of appeal in electoral disputes – proclaimed Daniel Chapo, the Frelimo-backed candidate, as the winner with 65.17% of the vote, and he was sworn in on Wednesday in Maputo.
Chapo’s election as successor to Filipe Nyusi, the Frelimo leader, has been widely contested on the streets, with the CC’s announcement adding to the chaos that the country had been experiencing since late October. Demonstrators supporting Mondlane – who, according to the CC, won only 24% of the vote, but who still claims victory – have demanded the “restoration of electoral truth” and set up barricades, looted and clashed with police.
The violence has left more than 300 people dead and another 600-plus suffering gunshot wounds, according to civil society organisations monitoring the process.
Lusa