Ruling party favourite, Armando Guebuza, is a wealthy businessman who has promised to tackle poverty and fight Aids. (BBC)

Maputo—A senior Roman Catholic bishop has sharply criticised the process in Mozambique’s recently concluded elections for lacking transparency and said manipulation had kept the ruling party ensconced in power.

The poll was conducted on 1 and 2 December, and the results gave the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) 63 per cent of the votes against the opposition Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo) party’s 34 per cent. After 18 years as president, Joaquim Chissano’s anointed successor, business magnate Armando Guebuza, will lead the country.

Renamo challenged the outcome of the election. It has threatened to boycott parliament unless courts invalidate the poll and arrange for a re-run, after the National Electoral Commission rejected its complaints. The opposition criticism of the electoral process was supported by senior Catholic clergy including Bernardo Filipe Governo, the bishop of Quelimane, the capital of Zambezia province, in central Mozambique.

Renamo was a rebel movement until it became an opposition party after a civil war ended in 1992. It cited “abnormal” turnouts and missing vote-counting sheets in its poll assessment.

But the spokesperson Filipe Manjate of the National Elections Commission said on Tuesday: “The sum of issues presented as irregularities do not justify the annulment of the final results.”

Bishop Governo accused the electoral commission of being an instrument of Frelimo and said: “As long as it continues to mix together state affairs and voting manipulation, the Guebuza government will be a copy of the Chissano government.”

Frelimo has been in power since independence and won 160 seats in the 250-member legislature compared to 90 for Renamo. In the outgoing legislature, Renamo had 117 and Frelimo 133.

“Unfortunately, a communist regime was established after independence, in 1975, and people’s liberties were limited,” said Governo, who has been a bishop in Quelimane for more than 28 years. “Besides an authoritarian system being introduced, a merciless persecution was carried out against the Catholic Church.”

He noted that after independence from Portugal “absolute poverty worsened as a result of unequal sharing of wealth” during the civil war.

The bishop, a Capuchin monk, called for reform of the election monitoring bodies so that they would comprise neutral, independent representatives from all contesting parties. “It cannot continue this way,” said Governo. “The people may be illiterate, but they are not stupid and some day justice will be done. No group can govern a country for ever while the people continue to live in abject poverty.”