After nearly three months of deadly post-election protests in Mozambique, the president of the Constitutional Council will swear president-elect Daniel Chapo into office in Maputo on January 15.
Mozambicans went to the polls on October 9 to elect new MPs, members of provincial assemblies, provincial governors and their new president in an election several international observer groups have since characterised as deeply flawed and irregular.
Unfortunately, recent local and general election cycles in the country have been marred by credible allegations of vote tampering and the manipulation of results by the governing Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo). The October general election was no different.
Preliminary and then final results in October showed Frelimo winning the election by a landslide, but repeated accusations of everything from ballot stuffing to voter intimidation and the manipulation of results by electoral officials, levelled by opposition parties the Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), and the Mozambican Democratic Movement (MDM), have cast a shadow on the legitimacy of the party’s win.
But by far the most vociferous opposition to the results came from independent presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane. The former television host and evangelical preacher was once a rising star in Renamo before being sidelined in an internal party contest by party leader Ossufo Momade in January 2024. Mondlane left Renamo and went on to launch an independent bid for the presidency, eventually securing the backing of Podemos and its party leader, Albino Forquilha.
Using mostly social media to appeal to disaffected and disillusioned young and urban voters, Mondlane and Podemos launched a spirited campaign that catapulted both to an impressive showing of 17% for Podemos in the parliamentary election and 24% for Mondlane. However, Mondlane roundly rejected the results and claimed his own parallel vote count had him at 53% of the vote in the presidential election.
What followed in late October were weeks of protests by supporters of both Mondlane and Podemos in towns and cities all over Mozambique, and a particularly significant protest movement in the capital city, Maputo. State security forces have responded with heavy-handed tactics, killing 280 people between late October and early January — according to local civil society organisations — and injuring thousands more in clashes with police.
With little explanation the Constitutional Council certified a final set of election results in late December that differed substantially from the preliminary and final results released by electoral authorities in December. Even Chapo’s margin of victory in the presidential election shrank from 70.67% in October to 65.17% in December.
In the preliminary results of October 16 Frelimo got 76.8% of the vote, which rose to 78% in the “final” results released on October 24, and dropped to 68% in the “certified” figures of December 23. Podemos went from 12.8% to 12.4% to 17%; Renamo from 8.4% to 8% to 11%; and MDM from 1.2% to 1.6% to 3%.
The credibility of the October election cycle will forever be called into question and will probably foreshadow the end of Frelimo’s 50-year grip on power.
The local economy has been battered by the post-election protests, violence and political crisis. The government has missed its revenue tax collection targets in October, November and December due to repeated disruptions to economic and business activity across the country’s mining, tourism, agriculture and export sectors.
The country is likely to be forced to cut government spending over the next year and it is at risk of not being able to meet its debt obligations. And the expected announcement (late last year) of the official resumption of a large-scale liquefied natural gas project in the northern Cabo Delgado province has been delayed indefinitely.
Chapo and his cabinet will have to assure international investors of his and his administration’s ability to navigate the likely shortfalls in the budget over the coming year and assuage the IMF’s concerns about the government’s ability to adhere to its extended credit facility, scheduled for expiration in May.
One possibility is the extension of the IMF programme by six months to a year, but navigating upcoming programme reviews — to access about $100m in remaining disbursements from the programme — will come with painful economic and fiscal policy trade-offs in an effort to balance a strained budget.
The road ahead will be anything but easy. Podemos, Renamo and the MDM are likely to be a far more formidable opposition force in and outside parliament, and Mondlane will remain a popular and powerful agitator. The biggest question of all will therefore be: is Chapo the right leader to meet this moment in Mozambique?
• Stuurman is an independent political risk analyst.
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