On Thursday, in the city of Quelimane, the Renamo party's candidate for governor of Zambézia province, Manuel de Araújo, denounced electoral illicit acts orchestrated to benefit the Frelimo party, which he described as a "military coup d'état".

In front of journalists, he presented 116 ballot papers in which those filled in favored the ruling Frelimo party.

"How come these original bulletins are out of STAE's loop?" he asked.

He said that he had already foreseen the occurrence of fraud to benefit Frelimo, and had even alerted the international community to the illicit activities.

According to D'Araújo, the presidents and vice-presidents of polling stations did not sign voting notices in several schools. He said that these incidents involved the provincial director of the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE), the provincial commander of the Police of the Republic of Mozambique and the provincial director of Finance.

Some completed notices and minutes were lost after being signed; he regretted the arrest of the candidate delegate for contesting the process of invalidating ballot papers that gave the Renamo party an advantage; STAE loaded ballot boxes where notices and minutes were not signed.

Meanwhile, the provincial director of the STAE is unaware of the more than 100 ballot papers presented by Manuel de Araújo.

Lourenço Fato said that he received the information with some surprise because it wouldn't make any sense for pre-voted ballots to appear the day after the vote.

"I don't know on what pretext this person is spreading this kind of information," he said.