He is likely to be sworn into office in mid-January, at the end of the term of the current President, Filipe Nyusi.

   In broad outline, the Council confirmed the preliminary results, announced by the National Elections Commission (CNE) on 24 October, but reduced Chapo’s margin of victory by five per cent, from 70 to 65 per cent. That five per cent went mostly to his main rival, Venancio Mondlane, whose total rose from 20 to 24 per cent.

   The final figures for the four presidential candidates, as read out by the Council’s chairperson, Lucia Ribeiro, were as follows. (The names of the candidates are given in the order they appeared on the ballot paper:

   1. Lutero Simango (MDM) 272,736 (4.02 per cent)

   2. Daniel Chapo (Frelimo) 4,416,306 (65.17 per cent)

   3. Venancio Mondlane (Podemos) 1,639,333 (24.19 per cent)

   4. Ossufo Momade (Renamo) 448,738 (6.62 per cent).

   As for the parliamentary election, Frelimo lost 24 seats, falling from the 195 seats that the CNE had given it to 171. Podemos was the second most voted party with 43 seats, followed by Renamo with 28 and the MDM with eight.

   For the first time, Renamo has lost its position as runner-up. This also means that it will lose its seat on the Council of State, a body that advises the president of the Republic.

   As for the elections to the provincial assemblies, Frelimo won a majority in all ten assemblies. The head of the winning list becomes the provincial governor. In most cases, this means no change, since Frelimo ran the current governors for a further term of office in eight of the ten provinces.

   The elections were marred by what the opposition described as “massive fraud”. The frauds included registration as voters of people who do not exist (“ghost voters”), ballot box stuffing, huge discrepancies between the numbers of people voting in the three elections, and refusal to allow opposition monitors to attend the count at the polling stations.

   Lucia Ribeiro admitted that the frauds had happened, but downplayed their significance. She said the “corrections” the Constitutional Council had made to the results avoided the need for a recount. “The irregularities that occurred during the elections did not substantially influence the results”, she claimed.

   Venancio Mondlane’s supporters do not agree. Almost immediately after Ribeiro stopped speaking, gangs of young men were setting fire to heaps of tyres on the road from the centre of the city to Maputo airport.

   From his hideout somewhere in Europe, Mondlane himself called for a general strike until Friday. He had already ordered a shutdown of all workplaces for the rest of the week.

   He exempted the informal sector from the general strike. “Our sisters who sell in the markets, our mothers who sell on the pavements can continue their activities”, he declared.

   For Mondlane, this week offers a “unique moment” for the people to organise the country. “The resistance is in the streets, in the squares and in the day-to-day activities of the people. Now is the time to take a position, to be smart, to show that we will no longer accept oppression. The armed forces and the security forces can no longer act violently against the people on the pretext that they are defending legality”.

   ”It’s time to act with intelligence, wisdom and unity. We need to mobilise the entire country, and not just the large cities. The time is now!” exclaimed Mondlane. He still imagines that he will become President and has fixed 15 January as the date when he will take office.

AIM: La Agencia de Información de Mozambique es la fuente diaria oficial de información de Mozambique con la misión de acercar al mundo un retrato multimedia de la actualidad del país (textos, fotografía y video).