Roads and highways were blocked, court buildings and toll booths were set ablaze, businesses were largely shut down, and police fired tear gas and bullets at crowds of demonstrators in the latest wave of chaos in the Southern African country after the court decision on Monday. Protesters gather next to a burning barricade in Maputo on Dec. 23.AMILTON NEVES/AFP/Getty Images
Protests have erupted across Mozambique, with police stations and banks attacked and torched, after the country’s top court upheld the ruling party’s disputed victory in October’s election.
Roads and highways were blocked, court buildings and toll booths were set ablaze, businesses were largely shut down, and police fired tear gas and bullets at crowds of demonstrators in the latest wave of chaos in the Southern African country after the court decision on Monday.
Election observers have cast doubt on Mozambique’s official results since they were first declared in October. European Union observers reported evidence of the “unjustified alteration of election results,” while the country’s Catholic bishops said there was widespread vote-rigging.
The top court, the Constitutional Council, has been reviewing the election vote count for weeks. On Monday, it acknowledged some significant errors in the count – but it refused to overturn the official victory by Frelimo, the party that has ruled Mozambique for nearly half a century after the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975.
Frelimo’s presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo, was initially declared the winner with 71 per cent. His margin was reduced by six percentage points in Monday’s court ruling, and Frelimo was stripped of 24 parliamentary seats, but the party retained its overall majority.
The irregularities in the vote count did not affect the final outcome of the election, the court said. It said the second-place candidate, Venancio Mondlane, had gained 24 per cent of the vote, compared with 20 per cent in the initial results.
The court offered no explanation for these revisions. Four of its seven judges were appointed by Frelimo parliamentarians and its support for Frelimo had been widely predicted.
Mr. Mondlane, who fled into exile after the election because of alleged attempts on his life and the assassination of two of his aides, has been the main organizer of the national protests for the past two months. This week he urged his supporters to take actions in the streets to paralyze the country.
Police and security forces have responded to the protests with violence. At least 130 people have been killed since the demonstrations began in October, according to human-rights groups. Hundreds more have been injured, and thousands arrested.
The demonstrators have repeatedly forced the closure of Mozambique’s land border with South Africa, damaging the country’s economy. On Monday they set fire to provincial offices of Frelimo, vandalized the home of a cabinet minister, blocked the main national highway and an access road to the international airport, and burnt piles of rubber tires, sending huge clouds of smoke over the cities.
Joseph Hanlon, a scholar who has studied Mozambique’s politics since the 1970s, said the court decision on Monday was a confirmation of “major fraud” in the October election. “But the changes were actually much smaller than the fraud found by observers,” he noted in a report on Monday.
If the court continues to offer no explanation for its revision of the election results, its findings will not be seen as credible, he said.