Mozambique opposition files suit against election results
MOZAMBIQUE’S largest opposition party Renamo on Wednesday lodged court papers calling for the October 15 election results to be annulled due to “massive electoral fraud”.
Renamo, the rebel group turned opposition party, lost the election to the long-ruling Frelimo party, securing under 22% of the vote, the electoral commission announced.
Incumbent President Filipe Nyusi of Frelimo, won a fresh five-year term.
President Filipe Nyusi cast his vote in Maputo as polls opened in tense Mozambique elections that are feared could test the country’s fragile peace, after a heated campaign marred by violence and allegations of electoral fraud.
Having previously called for the election to be annulled, the opposition submitted an official complaint to the National Electoral Commission (CNE) to be judged by the constitutional council.
“With this complaint we take on also all the misconduct that took place during the elections, and its evidence is well documented,” Renamo’s national spokesperson, Venancio Mondlane told journalists outside the National Election Commission (CNE) headquarters in Maputo after submitting the complaint.
“The results of the elections are null and void.”
A MAN who attempted to smuggle cannabis into prison by hiding it in a balloon up his nose has retrieved the drugs more than 18 years later, after mistakenly believing he had swallowed the package.
His doctors reported on the “unique case” in a paper published in the British Medical Journal under the heading of “a nose out of joint”.
According to the lead author Dr Murray Smith of Westmead Hospital in Australia, the patient was first given the cannabis inside a rubber balloon when his girlfriend visited him in prison. The man inserted the package into his right nostril to hide it from the prison guards and smuggle it into the facility. However he was unable to retrieve it once he slipped past them, and eventually mistakenly believed that he had accidentally swallowed it.
Over the next two decades the balloon developed into a rhinolith, a stone in the nasal cavity formed as calcium and magnesium salts slowly built up around the rubber.
This caused the patient regular sinus infections and frequent complaints about nasal obstructions, but it wasn’t until these developed into painful headaches that he sought treatment. Investigating the mysterious cause of the man’s headaches, his doctors performed a CT scan and discovered a “rubber capsule containing degenerate vegetable/plant matter” which was then surgically removed.
Renamo has accused the government of “massive electoral fraud” and breaching the country’s peace deal by using violence and intimidation on voting day.
The lower courts have so far convicted 158 people over electoral misconduct, while at least 140 more are still awaiting trial.
Fourteen of those convicted were arrested for ballot box stuffing.
At least 58 electoral irregularity complaints, by Frelimo, Renamo and the Democratic Movement of Mozambique submitted over election fraud were rejected by the district courts in the provinces of Nampula, Maputo, Sofala, the Supreme court said this week.
Of those rejected, six cases were sent to the constitutional court to seek further judgment.
Supreme court spokesperson Pedro Nhatitima said the majority of the queries were thrown out of court because they weren’t lodged within the legal deadline of 48 hours of the election results being posted.
Mozambican civil society and international observers have flagged numerous alleged attempts to stuff ballot boxes and chase away election monitors, as well as hundreds of thousands of so-called “ghost voters” on the electoral roll.
The Electoral
Institute for
Sustainable
Democracy in Africa (EISA) said it was regrettable that irregularities in voter registration had not been addressed before the elections.
Mozambique has seen one of its most violent election campaigns ever.
At least 10 people were killed in the run-up to the polls, according to a local observer mission.
Among the killings was the murder of a prominent election observer — suspected to have been carried out by a special police unit — and that of the Renamo Women’s League leader, whose bullet-ridden body was found with her husband’s in the western province of Tete.
Frelimo, which has ruled Mozambique since independence from Portugal in 1975, has hailed the elections as free and fair.
Observers from the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) also approved of the election, saying the run-up to the vote and the balloting itself were “generally peaceful and conducted in an orderly manner”.
Frelimo and Renamo, which fought a brutal civil war from 1975-1992 that left one nearly million people dead, signed a peace deal in August hoping to turn the page on decades of conflict. — AFP
Cannabis retrieved from man’s nose 18yrs after he tried to smuggle it into jail