MOZAMBIQUE: Opposition party to boycott parliament

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

JOHANNESBURG, 21 Dec 2004 (IRIN) - Mozambique's main opposition party, RENAMO, is to boycott the new parliament in protest against the manner in which the recently concluded presidential and parliamentary elections were conducted.

RENAMO has asked for a re-run of the elections. "We do not accept the results," Eduardo Namburete, RENAMO's elections manager told IRIN on Tuesday.

In an interview with a Lisbon-based Portuguese daily, Correio da Manha, RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlakama was quoted on Monday as saying, "We cannot complain that there is fraud and then accept the results and take our seats in parliament ... Not even requests from the international community will make me accept these results."

The ruling FRELIMO party recorded an emphatic victory, bagging nine of the country's 11 provinces. FRELIMO's presidential candidate, Armando Guebuza, also beat Dhlakama for the top post, garnering 63.7 percent of the vote.

In a preliminary statement, the European Union's Election Observer Mission (EU EOM) noted that while it had observed "shortcomings and irregularities" during the poll, these were "not enough to impact in a decisive way [on] the election results".

The EU EOM found that in the towns of Changara, in the western province of Tete, and Tsangano, in Gaza province in the south, polling station result sheets "lacked credibility, such as very high turn-out figures - sometimes beyond 100 percent. In all cases, votes had been cast in favour of the FRELIMO candidate or the party, sometimes with more than 90 percent.

"Given the low voter turnout figures in the rest of the country, the high turnout figures in these regions were particularly surprising, especially [bearing] in mind that those polling stations had voter lists dated from 1999, which contain the names of deceased persons (estimated at more than 10 percent)," said the EU EOM.

In Tsangano, and also in Changara and Cahora Bassa in Tete province, the mission observed that accredited RENAMO delegates "were not allowed to observe polling and counting procedures, or were kept at a distance by police forces".

According to the EU mission, Mozambique's National Election Commission (CNE) and most of the provincial election commissions are highly polarised.

[ENDS]