During celebrations of the MDM victory in Quelimane Thursday afternoon,
the police shot and killed musician Jaime Paulo Camilo, known as “Max Love”.
The victory parade was going
along the riverside Marginal and passed the fishing port and then was passing
the governor's residence. Camilo was on the roof of a lorry working a sound
system when he was shot by a guard at the governor's house.
The police then held two press conferences on Friday. In the first the
Zambezia provincial police spokesman Ernesto Serrote said the police had shot
at "an organised group of citizens" who were trying to break into the
governor's mansion.
In the second press conference Serrote announced "zero tolerance"
with respect to any demonstrations or disruptions of public order. "We
live in a democratic world so we are giving you a first warning, but we will
act now," AIM quoted Serrote. "For the police, enough is
enough." Police will respond to any challenges to their authority, he
said.
Fernando Veloso, director of Canal
de Mocambique, also at the press conference, reports that Serrote also said
the police would use live ammunition against any demonstrator.
There are unconfirmed reports of two other deaths. AIM reports one person died
when riot police fired tear gas into the Icidua school polling centre in
Quelimane during the count Wednesday night. And Diario Zambezia reports that
riot police killed a demonstrator in Mocuba.
There have been demonstrations in Gurue, Milange and Mocuba by MDM supporters accusing the electoral authorities
of a lack of transparency and manipulating the results, especially in Mocuba
where there was no explanation for the day-long delay in providing preliminary
results. In all three, MDM lost by small margins. In Mocuba, rumour and MDM
parallel counts had given a split result, with MDM winning the mayorship, but
Frelimo the assembly.
Meanwhile, in Chimoio the local STAE released preliminary results which are
slightly different from those released by Maputo STAE. For mayor, they give
Frelimo's Raul Conde M. Adriano 27,733 votes (52.9%) and the MDM candidate Joao
Luìs Ferrao 24,502 (47.1%). For municipal assembly, the result is Frelimo
27,761 and MDM 24,267.
But MDM's political delegate in Manica, Manuel de Sousa, told a press
conference that their parallel count showed 51.1% for Ferrao and 52.6% for MDM
in the assembly. He accused the electoral authorities of changing the results.
He claimed that some polling station results sheets were not handed into the
election commission and that some polling station heads were persuaded to sign
new false results sheets (editais). If true this would be very easy to prove,
because by law all party poll watchers are given signed copies of the edital
after the count. So MDM simply has to show its own copies of the editais to
prove a fraud.
Source: Mozambique political process bulletin Number LE-52 23 November 2013