Hundreds of supporters of Mozambique’s opposition protested Wednesday as the country inaugurated a new president following disputed elections and deadly unrest.
Daniel Chapo took his oath as the country’s fifth president before about 2,500 people who endured intense heat in front of a city hall in the capital, Maputo.
Opposition supporters peacefully protested a few meters away after security forces wielding guns and batons blocked them from getting to the venue.
Security forces sealed several roads and kept a heavy presence in other parts of Maputo.
Chapo, a 48-year-old law graduate, acknowledged the need to end the instability rocking the southern African nation.
“Social harmony cannot wait, nor can the building of consensus for the matters that worry the Mozambican people, so dialogue has already began and we will not rest until we have a united and cohesive country,” he said.
The country’s Constitutional Council in December declared Chapo the winner of the presidential election, with 65.17% of the vote, dismissing a challenge by opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane, whom it said got 24 percent of the vote.
A series of protests and a violent crackdown by security forces following the elections have left at least 300 people, including scores of children, dead, according to local and international human rights organizations.
Mondlane, a 50-year-old pastor, has been leading the push for protests through messages on platforms such as Facebook to demand “restoration of the electoral truth.” Some western countries, including the United States, have also questiond the credibility of the elections.
