Mozambique opposition rejects election results

MAPUTO — Mozambique's main opposition party Renamo said Tuesday it rejects the southern African country's recent general elections and called on officials to annul the results of the vote.

Renamo lost the October 28 poll to Frelimo, the party that has ruled Mozambique since independence in 1975. Official results gave Frelimo 75 percent of the vote to 18 percent for Renamo.

Renamo accused Frelimo of stuffing ballot boxes and other "electoral crime," and submitted a formal complaint to the country's national elections commission asking for the poll to be annulled.

"Renamo calls on the good sense of the elections commission in analysing the questions posed by our party to decide for the annulment of the presidential, legislative and provincial elections," said the complaint, quoted in the independent newspaper O Pais.

"We are looking at an electoral crime," Renamo spokeswoman Ivone Soares told reporters.

"In the face of all these deliberate and intentional irregularities committed by election officials, under Frelimo's orders, Renamo ... will not accept the results of the October 28 elections."

The elections commission has acknowledged the vote was marred by polling station workers who intentionally invalidated ballots by making extra ink marks on them.

The commission also excluded more than 100,000 ballots, according to an analysis by the Mozambican Public Integrity Center and the Association of European Parliamentarians for Africa.

The groups, which have been monitoring the counting process, said the decision amounted to an implicit recognition of ballot box stuffing.

But the elections commission said the irregularities were not enough to affect the outcome of the poll.

Former rebel group Renamo, which fought the Frelimo government in a 16-year civil war following independence, has made allegations of electoral fraud following each of Mozambique's four national elections since a 1992 peace agreement ushered in the country's first democratic polls.

Renamo has never won a majority in parliament, and long-time party leader Afonso Dhlakama has run unsuccessfully for president in each election.

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