Appeal of Poll Results Thrown Out by Mozambique's Constitutional Council

Mozambique Prime Minister Luisa Dias Diogo. The southern African nation will open a bridge that has been in the works for the last three decades.
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Renamo appeal thrown out

Reuters--MAPUTO. MOZAMBIQUE’S Constitutional Council has dismissed allegations by opposition party Renamo of vote rigging in elections which the ruling Frelimo won by a landslide, state-run newspaper Noticias reported yesterday.

Renamo said it would hold a nationwide protest after the council turned down an appeal in which it called for results of the October 28 poll to be annulled and new elections held.

"What I can say, briefly, is that there is a lack of legal arguments that can support Renamo’s electoral appeal," Geraldo Saranga, the secretary-general of the Constitutional Council, said in the newspaper report.

Renamo accused President Armando Guebuza’s Frelimo, the party that has ruled Mozambique since independence in 1975, of stuffing ballot boxes and other "electoral crimes". Official results showed Frelimo won 75 percent of the vote to 18 percent for Renamo. The victory gives the ruling party the power to change the constitution.

Renamo fought the Frelimo government in a 16-year civil war after independence from Portugal, and has accused it of fraud in all of Mozambique’s four national elections since a 1992 peace agreement.

"Our position now is that we are going to organise a nationwide demonstration in protest at the ruling," Renamo national spokesman Fernando Mazanga said.

"We will demand the establishment of an electoral court because the Constitutional Council only deals with appeals and its ruling is final," he said.

Renamo submitted the 500-page appeal on November 16 to the National Electoral Commission, which forwarded it to the Constitutional Council, along with its own report on the poll. — Reuters.