• by Zenaida Machado (maputo)
• Wednesday, November 11, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Mozambique’s incumbent President Armando Guebuza has won the Mozambican 2009 elections in a landslide obtaining three quarters of the votes, according to official results.

Leopoldo da Costa, the chairman of Mozambique's National Elections Commission (CNE), announced that Frelimo’s Guebuza has been re-elected for second five-year term, winning 75.4 percent of the votes.

Long time opposition leader Renamo’s Afonso Dhlakama won 16.5 percent and 8.64 percent of votes went to Daviz Simango, leader of the newly formed Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM).

Ruling party Frelimo won in a landslide, obtaining 191 of the 250 parliamentary seats. The main opposition party, Renamo, won 51 seats and new political party MDM, formed after a split from Renamo, won eight.

Before the election Frelimo held 190 seats and Renamo 60. Frelimo has been in power for almost 34 years, since the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975.

Frelimo has the two-thirds majority needed to change the country’s constitution. This gives Guebuza the option of changing the constitution to allow him to run for a third term of office. Mozambique’s constitution allows only two terms of office for a president.

However, Frelimo senior members have made it clear that Guebuza will not contest the 2014 presidential elections. 'The majority in parliament will give us more freedom to choose what is best for Mozambican people. Frelimo has always worked on benefit of people. And that is what we will continue to do in the next mandate,' explained Veronica Macamo, the Frelimo election officer.

However, opposition parties Renamo and MDM have declared the Oct. 28 election fraudulent, and have accused Frelimo of ballot stuffing. The MDM presented to the media and election observers a list of irregularities it noted during the elections. The MDM claimed that some staff at several polling stations committed electoral crimes. The MDM showed a video recorded on a cell phone showing election staff apparently tampering ballots at a polling station in Beira.

Despite these claims, the CNE says no official complaints of irregularities were submitted to them.

'Political parties have two days after the voting day to present complaints or proof of irregularities. We did not receive any complaints during this period,' said Da Costa. More than 1,000 national and international observers from the Africa Union, European Union, Southern African Development Community and the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries declared the fourth Mozambican elections free and fair.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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