Celebrating his 48th birthday at a Maputo orphanage, that looks after children with special needs, Chapo said the best measure that could be taken would be for Mozambicans to be united from the Rovuma to the Maputo (the northern and southern boundaries of the country).

Echoing his predecessors in Frelimo, Chapo claimed that “national unity is the secret of our success. We need peace, and peace is born in the heart of each of us. We need reconciliation among Mozambicans, because we are all brothers”.

Chapo stressed the need to work hard and immediately to stabilise the national economy, guaranteeing the rehabilitation of the economic fabric of the country torn apart by rioting that was supposedly in protest against the electoral fraud that gave Chapo his victory.

The unrest had caused “incalculable damage”, and “thousands of our brothers have lost their jobs because of these demonstrations”, he said.

Chapo noted that some businesspeople had seen all that they had built over an entire life reduced to ashes in an instant and they were now in dire need of support. “We should understand that destroying is easy, but building is not an easy task”.

The same attention, he added, should be paid to the rebuilding of public infrastructures so that the Mozambican state could function well.

Chapo called for a comprehensive dialogue with the political parties and with all strata of society to reach a consensus which would then be channelled to parliament in the shape of new laws.

Far-reaching reforms are needed, he insisted, “to bring the laws into line with reality”. The reforms he had in mind included an overhaul of the electoral legislation, but Chapo did not say whether his ideas included separating the political parties from the electoral management bodies.

One of the main factors behind electoral fraud is that the electoral apparatus –at national, provincial and district levels– is stuffed full of political appointees, whose primary loyalty is to their political party and not to the electorate.