20100104
ALLAFRICA

Maputo — Afonso Dhlakama, leader of Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, has proposed negotiations between himself and President Armando Guebuza to avoid the demonstrations which he has proposed to call in protest at the results of the 28 October general elections.

Interviewed in the northern city of Nampula, where he is currently living, by the Beira daily paper "Diario de Mocambique", Dhlakama claimed that dialogue with Guebuza "is the only way that will allow us to avoid a national climate of panic", arising from the proposed demonstrations.

He said he was prepared to speak with Guebuza "at any time and in any place", and threatened that, if the demonstrations went ahead, "the country will stop". Yet in the next breath he insisted that the demonstrations will be entirely peaceful.

The elections were a crushing defeat for Dhlakama and Renamo. Guebuza won the presidential election with 75 per cent of the vote to 16.4 per cent for Dhlakama and 8.6 per cent for the third candidate, Daviz Simango, leader of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM).

In the parliamentary election, Frelimo won 74.7 per cent of the vote, Renamo 17.7 per cent, and the MDM 3.9 cent, while the remainder was divided between 16 minor parties standing in one or more constituencies. Frelimo has thus won 191 of the 250 parliamentary seats, Renamo 51 and the MDM 8.

Dhlakama claims that the Guebuza and Frelimo victories are the result of fraud. While there certainly was fraud in a minority of polling stations, it was not on such a scale as to explain the Frelimo landslide.

The day after the election Dhlakama threatened that "Mozambique will burn", but he soon toned this down to a call for "peaceful demonstrations" across the country, but without ever suggesting a date for them.

"Many Mozambicans are discontented with the election results", he told the paper. "They are just waiting for the moment to demonstrate".

He also claimed that the ruling on the elections last week by the Constitutional Council proved that he was right about his allegations of fraud. "For the first time the Constitutional Council went public to confirm that what we said about the irregularities is true", he said. "This proves that we are not psychopaths, but realists committed to democracy".

In fact, the Council did not endorse most of the Renamo claims - for instance, that Frelimo had organised a parallel voter registration, and had switched the real electoral registers for phoney ones, or that Frelimo had a clandestine printing press which issued a parallel set of ballot papers, or that all teachers had instructions to fill the ballot boxes with ten extra votes each.

The Council specifically stated that the various irregularities it denounced "did not influence the election results", and it therefore validated the same results which the National Elections Commission (CNE) first announced on 11 November.

Dhlakama's desire to speak to Guebuza contrasts sharply with his refusal to meet the President over the past five years. As the runner-up in the 2004 elections, Dhlakama was invited to all major state events, but boycotted them all. He refused even to attend an informal lunch which Guebuza gave in 2005 for the other presidential candidates.

But now he declared "Guebuza has experience of negotiations, and so he should open up to dialogue for the good of Mozambique".

Among the objectives of the planned demonstrations, Dhlakama added, was to persuade the new government not to take office and to hold new elections instead. But Guebuza's investiture is set for 14 January, and it is clearly impossible for Renamo to organise demonstrations before then.

The head of the outgoing Frelimo parliamentary group, Manuel Tome, told AIM that Dhlakama's demands "make no sense. We've already had the elections and the results have been validated and proclaimed".

He thought Dhlakama was now trying to push himself centre stage, and repair his image "which has been greatly damaged over the past five years". Tome did not see why Frelimo and Guebuza should help him in this.

As for the alleged national panic about impending demonstrations, Tome could see no sign of this. Like Dhlakama, Tome has been spending much of his time in Nampula in recent months, since he was head of the Frelimo election brigade in that province. He was aware that some Renamo members in Nampula were spreading rumours that a new war was about to erupt, "but nobody pays them any attention. Life goes on normally".

Dhlakama also insisted that the 51 Renamo deputies will not take their seats in the new parliament, "because that would mean legitimizing the elections and the government".

The new parliament is sworn in on 12 January. If the Renamo deputies do not turn up to take the oath of office within a month of that date, they will lose their seats, and their parliamentary wages.