By Ricardo Dias
Maputo (MOZTIMES) – The Mozambican Attorney-General’s Office (PGR) has begun a civil suit against Venâncio Mondlane, and the PODEMOS party, demanding compensation of 32 million meticais to repair the damage caused by the demonstrations of protest against the election results.
A Monday press release from the Public Prosecutor’s Office declared that Mondlane and the main political party backing him, PODEMOS, in the person of its president, Albino Forquilha, are co-defendants in the civil suit and the prosecution is seeking damages of 32.3 million meticais.
The release says the co-defendants “have continued with calls and appeals for the mass participation of citizens in the aforementioned protest movements, inciting them to fury and to paralyse all the country’s activities”.
The civil suit has been deposited with the Maputo City Law Court in order to compensate the State for damage caused in the protests that have been under way since 21 October.
In this unprecedented suit, the PGR, in its role as guardian of legality, declared there could be no doubt about the responsibility of Mondlane and PODEMOS as “instigators” because their declarations were “determinant” for the damage done to State assets.
The PGR accuses Mondlane and PODEMOS of continuing to “instigate” movements of protest, despite the current “social disorder”, and urging even more severe acts against the State.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office has already set in motion 208 criminal proceedings against the “moral and material authors” of the violence in the post-election demonstrations.
Mondlane has called his supporters onto the streets through live broadcasts transmitted on his Facebook page. His main demand is to “restore the truth about the elections”.
The National Elections Commission (CNE) announced preliminary results on 24 October which gave victory to the ruling FRELIMO Party and its presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo.
Mondlane, however, insists that he won the presidential election and that PODEMOS came top of the parliamentary poll.
The whereabouts of Mondlane are currently unknown. He has been in exile for the past month, and broke his promise to come back to Mozambique in time to lead a “march on Maputo” on 7 November.
A new wave of demonstrations is now likely: Mondlane promises that, on 19 November, he will announce the “second stage of the fourth phase” of the demonstrations.
The first stage concentrated on disrupting the country’s frontiers and ports. In most places, nothing at all happened, but the demonstrators closed down the main border crossing between Mozambique and South Africa, at Ressano Garcia, for the best part of three days.
Since last Friday, calm has by and large returned to the country, but every night, in obedience to a request from Mondlane, at 21.00, there are outbursts of noise, as, citizens bang pots and pans, sound horns and blow whistles and other musical instruments to express their support for Mondlane’s demands.
Also at night, criminals are seizing control of some of the Maputo streets. Using the demonstrations as a convenient cover, they have erected barricades and set up informal tollgates to extort money from motorists. Anyone who does not pay up risks a broken window, or worse.
So far the police have done nothing to remove the illegal tollgates. (RD)
