On the morning of 19 October, the Mais Integridade Consortium was surprised by the sad news of the barbaric and repugnant murders of Dr Elvino Dias, lawyer of the presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane and the main legal adviser of PODEMOS, and of Paulo Guambe, election agent of PODEMOS in the 2024 general elections, in the neighbourhood of COOP in Maputo city.
According to eye-witnesses, the victims were intercepted by two Mazda BT-50 vehicles from which two unknown individuals emerged, carrying firearms. They immediately sprayed their victims with bullets. Elvino Dias died on the spot, and Paulo Guambe some hours later, since the Mozambican police prevented their evacuation in an ambulance which had gone there to rescue them. The witnesses said that the police censored and intimidated them so that they would not register the scenes of violence, and even collected and damaged several cell phones.
Elvino Dias was the lawyer for Venâncio Mondlane who handled the legal battles over election disputes in the municipal elections of 2023, where he helped organise the proof which led to the trials of several election offences in the Maputo law courts. Elvino Dias worked with Venâncio Mondlane in Renamo’s internal legal battle which obliged this party to hold the Congress which was being downplayed by the Renamo leadership. Dias also worked on the struggle to guarantee that that the CAD (Democratic Alliance Coalition) would not be excluded from the 2024 general elections. Elvino Dias was also in charge of the election disputes arising from the various proofs of election fraud that were detected during the 2024 elections.
In a note published on his Facebook page, Elvino Dias denunced a plan to assassinate him and the presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane. That plan went into action shortly after midnight on 19 October, in a clear blow against democracy and against electoral truth and justice.
Mais Integridade condemns this vile and barbaric assassination and urges the authorities to clear up this crime urgently and ensure that those who committed it are held responsible. The murders of Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe represent, for Mais Integridade, an act of intimidation against all those who are demanding transparency and truth about the 2024 elections, including the members of this consortium who have been actively denouncing electoral fraud in Mozambique, through their work of observation and denouncing the manoeuvres to manipulate the results sheets (“editais”) in order to benefit the Frelimo Party and its presidential candidate.