RENAMO rejects Supreme Court ruling

Mozambique’s main opposition party, RENAMO, has rejected a Supreme Court endorsement of last month’s elections which it alleges were rigged. Speaking at a press conference in Maputo on Tuesday, RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlakama said: “We do not recognise the verdict. We think there is no distance between FRELIMO and the Supreme Court, and so we’re not accepting it and we propose a recount.” On Tuesday the Supreme Court dismissed RENAMO’s allegations of fraud and ruled that presidential and parliamentary elections were “free, fair and transparent” and had been held in an “orderly fashion in observance with the constitution and law.” In its verdict read out by Judge Luis Mondlane the court said: “The arguments presented by RENAMO are inconsistent and do not justify any annulment of the elections or a recount of the votes.” In the 3-5 December polls, President Joaquim Chissano was re-elected with 52.3 percent of the vote, with Dhlakama, his only rival getting 47.7 percent. In the parliamentary race, Chissano’s ruling FRELIMO party won 133 of the 250 seats in parliament and RENAMO and its coalition 117 seats. Analysts in the capital Maputo told IRIN on Wednesday that RENAMO’s rejection of the results could mean that RENAMO deputies would boycott parliament. “But this will not affect the workings of parliament, because FRELIMO have a 16 seat majority, they need 126 seats to pass any piece of legislation,” one observer said. He added that later on some kind of negotiations may have to take place between the two parties, possibly with an outside mediator. “But at this stage it is still too early to say,” he cautioned. “Chissano has eluded to the fact that his government will keep going if RENAMO decides not to take their seats,” he added. At a press conference after the announcement of the court’s decision, Chissano said that FRELIMO deputies would take their seats in parliament in late January and that RENAMO’s seats would be “reserved for them in case they refuse to take them now.” He added: “Life must go on and we cannot allow the country to be paralysed at the will of a political group.” Analysts suggested that by boycotting parliament, the democratic process in Mozambique would suffer. “Without the RENAMO members in parliament, FRELIMO could pass any piece of legislation without much opposition and without much debate,” one analyst said. “On a regional level it sets a very bad precedent when opposition parties can boycott parliament simply because they don’t agree with the election results or with the law. This does not help to entrench democracy in the region and in many ways can be seen as a step backwards in the democratisation process in southern Africa,” he added. Diplomatic sources in Maputo told IRIN that any decision to boycott parliament could “backfire” on RENAMO. “What we could see happen is support for RENAMO actually decline. People in Mozambique who do support RENAMO could think twice about supporting the opposition if they think that their votes are not been represented in parliament,” one diplomat pointed out.