Court investigates allegations of elections fraud

The Supreme Court in Mozambique has begun investigating charges of "vote rigging" during the country's presidential and parliamentary elections which were held earlier this month. Court spokesman, Jose Maria told Mozambican state radio that a panel of judges had started examining complaints made by the opposition party, RENAMO. One of RENAMO's complaints has been that the National Elections Commissions (CNE) relied on partial results from the provincial elections commissions instead of doing its own count. The spokesman said that the court had a legal period of 15 days after the publication of the results to either validate or invalidate the results. He said that the court "was doing everything possible" to have a verdict by 6 January. Official results announced by the CNE showed that President Joaquim Chissano had won 52.29 percent of the vote, and his ruling FRELIMO party retained its majority in the 250 seat parliament by winning 133 seats. His only opponent in the presidential race, Afonso Dhlakama, leader of RENAMO, garnered 47.71 percent of the votes. RENAMO took 117 parliamentary seats.