Mozambican Ruling Party Wins Presidential Elections

Mozambique’s Frelimo ruling party presidential candidate Daniel Chapo looks on in Maputo, Mozambique, 24 October 2024. Photo: EFE/EPA/LUISA NHANTUMBO

October 24, 2024 Hour: 2:31 pm

Daniel Chapo, who represents the ruling party, Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo) won the hard-fought presidintial elections and will replace President Filipe Nyusi’s rule after his maximum two terms.

Chapo’s victory allow extending the Frelimo, a Marxist-Leninist party, five-decade grip on power since the Mozambique’s independence from Portugal in 1975.

The electoral commission said Chapo had won 70 per cent of the vote as his closest challenger, Venancio Mondlane, backed by the Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos) party, got 20 per cent.

Mondlane displaced the former rebel and right-wing opposition party Mozambican National Resistance, Renamo, whose candidate was in third place this time.

⚠️ Protests, particularly in #Nampula #Mozambique are intensifying, raising instability concerns. Meanwhile National Elections Commission is set to confirm the ruling party's a BIG victory amid protests over alleged election fraud and the killings of opposition figures. @hrw pic.twitter.com/jb36p66por
— Silvio do Quental (@SilviodoQuental) October 24, 2024

Before the election officials announced the results were already rejected by Mondlane, who called last Monday and this Thursday and Friday days of general strike to protest against an alleged electoral fraud and against the murder last week of a lawyer and a PODEMOS leader.

Apart from its next president, more than 17 million Mozambicans were also called on the 9th to elect members of the Assembly of the Republic and governors and legislators of the country’s ten provinces and the city of Maputo.

In a presidential election with 56.52% abstention, the FRELIMO candidate won despite the party being swept by a serious corruption scandal during the last term of office.

The elections were also overshadowed by the resurgence of jihadist attacks in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, which the Mozambican army has been fighting since 2017, and the worsening poverty.