Mozambique protests turn violent over disputed vote

Mozambique’s capital Maputo awoke to wreckage and mobile Internet cuts yesterday as protests overnight turned violent following the ruling party Frelimo’s re-election after 49 years in power.
Hundreds of opposition supporters demonstrated, rejecting what they called a ballot “stolen” by a “corrupt” electoral commission, which on Thursday announced that Frelimo’s candidate Daniel Chapo had won the October 9 election with 71 percent of the vote.
As the election authority, widely accused of acting in the ruling party’s favour, was announcing the results, crowds gathered in multiple cities. Protests escalated, with rioters setting fire to tyres to block avenues in Maputo and scaling Frelimo’s election billboards and destroying them. Some also threw stones at riot police, who fired tear gas to disperse them, an AFP reporter saw. Internet outages across mobile carriers struck Maputo, although home access was not affected, according to AFP reporters.
“We can confirm a near total outage of mobile Internet connection in Mozambique” starting around noon local time (1000 GMT) that was “likely to limit coverage of events on the ground”, Internet outage monitor Netblocks told AFP.
Chapo, a 47-year-old former provincial governor with no experience in national government, was little known before his surprise nomination as Frelimo’s candidate. He will take over from President Filipe Nyusi in January. Opposition leader Venancio Mondlane — who has declared himself the winner, claimed irregularities and urged demonstrations - officially won just over 20 percent. “We absolutely reject these results,” said Mondlane, during a Facebook live broadcast on Thursday evening.
“They do not reflect the will of the people,” he added, calling the political situation in the southern African country “rotten, doctored and fake”. Several cities saw isolated incidents take place overnight.
In northern Nampula, one person died in clashes between law enforcement and protesters, police said.
In Maputo, demonstrators vehemently opposed the results. “This country must be led by Venancio,” a protester who declined to give his name told AFP. “We did not vote for these leeches, we did not vote for this man,” he said, referring to the triumphant Chapo. “We are tired of all this.”
Poll observers have deplored concerning irregularities in the electoral process while the Catholic Church has gone so far as to warn of at times “foul” fraud. A European Union poll observer mission earlier this month noted “net favouritism” in favour of Frelimo. EU officials have raised concerns about the polls’ legitimacy, noting “irregularities during counting and unjustified alteration of election results at polling station and district level”. They also stressed that the numbers did not “add up” across about a third of recounts. More than 17mn out of a population of 33mn were called to vote on October 9. That figure was surprising as the median age of Mozambicans is 17 and the legal voting age is 18, experts previously said. A total of 104 percent of the adult population of voting age was registered on electoral rolls, the EU mission stressed. Chapo, 47, will be the first president not to have been a fighter during the 16-year civil war between Frelimo and Renamo that ended in 1992, which claimed around a million lives.
While Renamo has traditionally been the main opposition group, the emergence of Mondlane and the Podemos party was a novel development in this election.