Mozambiques Governing Party Candidate Wins Disputed Presidential Election

Daniel Chapo was declared the winner of Mozambique’s presidential election on Thursday after a process marred by violence and widespread accusations that his party, Frelimo, which has run the country for nearly five decades, committed fraud.

The country’s electoral commission announced that Mr. Chapo won with nearly 71 percent of the vote in the election, which was held on Oct. 9. He will replace Filipe Nyusi, who has served his limit of two five-year terms.

The announcement came amid deep upheaval in a southern African nation that has been battling a yearslong insurgency by Islamist extremists in its northern coastal region of Cabo Delgado. The conflict has only deepened the divisions between those who benefit from Mozambique’s trove of natural resources — including natural gas and precious stones — and those struggling with widespread poverty and unemployment.

On Monday, tear gas and gunfire filled the streets of the capital, Maputo, as the police clashed with thousands of demonstrators, who accused the governing party of rigging the election and orchestrating the fatal shooting of two supporters of Mr. Chapo’s main rival.

Frelimo has said it has not committed any fraud and was not involved in the killings.

“Frelimo is confident that the results reflect the will of the people,” Ludmila Maguni, a party spokeswoman, wrote in an email to The New York Times.

This month’s election and the sporadic protests around it may be one of the sharpest tests of Frelimo’s power since it led Mozambique to independence from Portugal in 1975 and weathered a civil war in the years after.

“People are more fed up now than ever before,” said Borges Nhamirre, a Maputo-based researcher with the Institute for Security Studies. “This is a critical moment for our democracy.”

Fears are high that even more violence could break out in the coming days. The election results must be confirmed by the Constitutional Council, the nation’s highest court, and they will almost certainly be challenged by Venâncio Mondlane, the upstart opposition candidate who finished second and who has said that the election was stolen from him.

Several independent election observation missions have said that they saw irregularities in the voting process that tilted the race in Mr. Chapo’s favor.

Mr. Mondlane has called on Mozambicans to continue protesting peacefully.

Many Mozambicans have reached their breaking point. Economic conditions for many people have deteriorated in recent years and inequality has become more evident, Mr. Nhamirre said. He pointed to some of the social media posts of the current president’s son, Florindo Nyusi, showing him driving expensive cars and posing with celebrities across the globe.

“Young people see that and they start to question, ‘Where did this guy get money?’ ” Mr. Nhamirre said.

Much of the unrest has been led by young people, who have been hit especially hard by the country’s economic struggles. (The median age in the country is 17.) Like youth in many other southern African nations governed by parties that led the fight against colonialism, young Mozambicans do not have the same allegiance to these former liberation parties and are instead looking for governing results, analysts say.

Mr. Mondlane has drawn broad support from Mozambique’s youth, vowing to make the country’s government and institutions work for the people. He was once a leading member of the main opposition, Renamo, but fell out with the party in a leadership dispute. Shortly before the election, he was able to get on the ballot as an independent candidate with the backing of a small party, Podemos. He saw a quick rise in popularity, drawing large, boisterous crowds to his rallies.

Elvino Dias, a lawyer preparing Mr. Mondlane’s challenge to the election results, and Paulo Guambe, a senior Podemos official, were fatally shot in their car in Maputo late last Friday. Mr. Mondlane and his supporters have accused the government of perpetrating the killings. But Mr. Nyusi, the current president, urged Mozambicans on Wednesday to not make “a tragedy out of the barbaric murder of two compatriots,” and to avoid lighting a “fuse to inflict more suffering on other compatriots,” according to LUSA, the Portuguese news agency.

The international community has also raised alarm over how the election has played out. The European Union’s election observer mission released a statement this week saying that its observers had seen “irregularities during counting and unjustified alteration of election results at polling station and district level.”

The E.U. observers were prevented from observing the counting in some places, the statement said.

Mozambique’s Catholic bishops also released a statement condemning the election, saying the fact that more than half of registered voters did not cast ballots was a sign of mistrust in the electoral system.

“Unfortunately, once again, gross fraud has occurred,” the statement said.

Tavares Cebola contributed reporting from Maputo, Mozambique.