{Mozambique’s Renamo opposition party will not take up its parliamentary seats in protest against the southern African country’s election results, its spokesman said on Wednesday.}<\/p>\n
“We will not take our seats at parliament, which is due to be sworn in on Jan 12. Our party and president decided that we do not take part in a farce,” party spokesman Antonio Muchanga told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Renamo has alleged widespread fraud and irregularities, including ballot stuffing, in October’s election, in which it won 89 of the 250 seats in parliament. The ruling Frelimo party secured 144 seats and a third party won 17.<\/p>\n
Mozambique police have released an opposition spokesman they had arrested for allegedly leading an illegal demonstration and inciting violence, local media cited his lawyer as saying on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Antonio Muchanga, spokesman for Mozambique’s main opposition Renamo party, was arrested on Tuesday after leading protests against the result of last October’s election that the ruling Frelimo party and its candidate Filipe Nyusi won.<\/p>\n
Police said the march on Saturday in Maputo was illegal because the organisers did not obtain permission in advance.<\/p>\n
Tensions have been running high in Mozambique as Renamo and its candidate, former civil war rebel leader Afonso Dhlakama, allege widespread fraud and irregularities in last year’s poll, including ballot stuffing.<\/p>\n
In the run-up to the election, Renamo partisans clashed sporadically with troops and police. The Renamo leader only emerged from a bush hideout in September to reaffirm a 1992 peace pact which ended a 17-year civil war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Mozambique’s Renamo opposition party will not take up its parliamentary seats in protest against the southern African country’s election results, its spokesman said on Wednesday.} “We will not take our seats at parliament, which is due to be sworn in on Jan 12. Our party and president decided that we do not take part in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000055778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-18178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000055778,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18178.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18178.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18178.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18178.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18178.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18178.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000055778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18178"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=18178"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=18178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}