HARARE – Regional leaders are snubbing Daniel Chapo’s inauguration as president of Mozambique on Wednesday over security concerns.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who holds the rotating chairmanship of the Southern African Development Community sent defence minister Oppah Muchinguri.
Mozambique has been engulfed by opposition protests and killings by security forces following disputed elections last October. The opposition accuses the ruling FRELIMO party of rigging.
SADC tasked a team of elders to mediate but outgoing Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi blocked the mission, insisting that there was no crisis in the country.
With more protests planned to coincide with Wednesday’s inauguration, regional leaders including the presidents of South Africa, Angola and Zambia sent representatives to the event.
Zimbabwe’s former foreign affairs minister Walter Mzembi said the snub was related to security concerns.
“The entire inauguration has been downgraded to a ministerial event largely to protect heads of state from security unknowns in the midst of a news embargo on the actual goings on in Mozambique where the state may be underplaying and underreporting the crisis on its hands, ” Mzembi told ZimLive.
“The blocking of a SADC troika assessment mission of the situation through the Panel of Elders is unstately and may also have contributed to the boycott. Mozambique is reluctant to subject itself to peer review. The panel was supposed to report back on the same day as inauguration, making everyone wonder what was going to give in to the other. So clearly Mozambique has chosen it’s sovereignty ahead of well-meaning club review of the situation and then inauguration in that order.”
Chapo’s inauguration, Mzembi said, would be a” partisan Mozambican affair with no proper regional validation except ministers reporting back to their presidents on what they saw.”
Incoming president Daniel Chapo, 48 this year, is succeeding Nyusi as leader of FRELIMO which has ruled the former Portuguese colony since 1975.
FRELIMO’s selection of Chapo as its candidate was viewed as an attempt to put a fresh face on the long-ruling party as it tried to appeal to younger voters seeking change.
Mozambique’s Constitutional Council said Chapo secured about 65 percent of the vote, lower than the figure of more than 70 percent given by the electoral commission in late October.
His main rival Venancio Mondlane, who the Constitutional Council said came second in the presidential election with about 24 percent of the vote, rejected the results and has led popular street protests which have left over 200 people dead in a violent response by authorities.
