Mozambique ruling party leads early election results as opposition cries foul

By Manuel Mucari

MAPUTO (Reuters) - Mozambique's ruling party Frelimo was leading provisional election results in all 11 provinces on Wednesday, while opposition parties cried fraud and one called for a strike.

Frelimo's presidential candidate Daniel Chapo was widely expected to win the Oct. 9 election. The party has governed Mozambique since 1975 and has been consistently accused of rigging elections, which it denies.

Full results are expected on Oct. 24.

Independent candidate Venancio Mondlane, seen as Chapo's biggest challenger, said he was in the lead according to his own tally and called for a nationwide strike on Monday, Oct. 21.

"They (Frelimo) are not going to hand over power to anyone. They want to continue to control power, finance, business, oil, gas, diamonds, rubies," Mondlane said in a video broadcast on his social media pages.

"To show that the people are actually ruling, we will paralyse all activity on Monday," he said.

Presidential candidate Lutero Simango of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique, a small opposition party, said that he would challenge the results in court.

A Frelimo spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment. In public remarks on Friday, Chapo called for people to remain calm while awaiting official results.

Election observers said the poll did not meet international standards for democratic elections. The International Republican Institute, a U.S.-based monitoring group, reported vote buying, intimidation, inflated voter rolls in Frelimo strongholds, limited transparency in result collation, and other issues.

"Once again, as a country, we held elections that... do not reflect, at least from what we have been observing, the will of the voters," said Edson Cortez, director of the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), a Mozambican NGO.

A spokesperson for the electoral commission declined to comment on those allegations.

Videos circulating on social media showed street protests in the northern city of Nampula on Wednesday. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the videos.

Mozambique police have opened fire on political protesters in the past, including after last year's local elections, according to human rights groups.

(Reporting by Manuel Mucari, Additional reporting and writing by Nellie Peyton; Editing by William Maclean)