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Presidential candidate of Mozambique's ruling party to take office Jan. 15

Xinhua, January 8, 2015 Adjust font size:

The winners of last October's Presidential election, Filipe Jacinto Nyusi, is to be sworn in on Thursday next week as the youngest head of state since Mozambique became independent in 1975.

Nyusi, 56, will be sworn into office by the chairperson of the Constitutional Council, Hermegildo Gamito. The Constitutional Council is Mozambique's highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law.

The Council validated the election results in a ruling issued on December 30. These results showed that Nyusi, the candidate of the ruling Frelimo Party, won some 2.8 million votes (57 percent).

His closest rival, Afonso Dhakama, leader of the former rebel movement Renamo, was a million votes behind. Dhlakama won 1.8 million votes (36.6 percent).

The third candidate, Daviz Simango, mayor of Beira, and leader of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), won 314,759 votes (6. 4 percent).

Renamo and the MDM refused to recognize the results, claiming that the elections were fraudulent, even though the entire electoral apparatus, from the polling stations right up to the National Elections Commission (CNE), contained literally thousands of political party appointees.

The MDM, recognizing that there can be no appeal against ruling of the Constitutional Council, has reconciled itself to the results.

Renamo, however, is threatening to set up a parallel government if Frelimo does not accept its demand to form a "caretaker government".

Dhlakama says the "caretaker government" would essentially be a Frelimo-Renamo coalition. The ruling party has repeatedly rejected the Renamo demand, and says nothing can stop Nyusi from announcing the composition of the new government shortly after he has taken office.

Nyusi, an engineer, is former defence minister. He was born in a poor family in Mueda district of the northernmost province of Cabo Delgado.

His father was a taylor and his mother a housewife. In 1964, he, his parents and his bothers fled to neighbouring Tanzania, during the struggle against the Portuguese colonialism.

He studied at Chilala Primary School in Lindi region, in southern Tanzania, before joining Frelimo in 1972 in Nachingwea, where he took military training.

The following year, he was sent to Tunduru Primary School (Mozambican School System), before joining Mariri Secondary School at Montepuez, in southwest Cabo Delgado.

From there, he went to a secondary school in the central port city of Beira. From Maputo, he went to former Czechoslovakia to study military engineering, before becoming executive director of Mozambique's publicly-owned Ports and Railways. Endi