The ManicaPost
MILLIONS of people headed to the polls in Mozambique’s general election after a heated campaign marred by sporadic violence and allegations of electoral fraud.
The Frelimo party, which has ruled the southern African country since independence from Portugal in 1975, is widely expected to beat its arch-rival, Renamo, a former rebel group turned main opposition party.
Acceptance of the result has been seen as a key test of the fragile peace deal signed in August between the government and opposition rebels.
“Mozambique has chosen to move forward peacefully,” President Filipe Nyusi said on Tuesday. “Peace means that everything must be done according to the rules.”
Nyusi, 60, is forecast to win a second five-year term despite chronic unrest and a financial crisis linked to alleged state corruption.
“Frelimo is a machine,” said Castro Davis, a 42-year-old public servant in the capital Maputo, who predicts a “straightforward victory”.
Most of Mozambique’s 13 million registered voters were born after Frelimo came to power in 1975.
The youth of voters has played a significant role in undermining support for ruling parties that seized power across Africa in the aftermath of struggles against colonial regimes.
Carlos Alberto, a 22-year-old student waiting to vote, said he wanted to see reforms in education, employment and housing. “We vote and then nothing happens,” he said. “We need to make changes.”
Renamo is predicted to win between three to five of Mozambique’s 10 provinces for the first time following a change in the law allowing voters to elect provincial governors.
The party made gains in last year’s municipal elections, winning eight town halls.
Renamo’s candidate, Ossufo Momade, 58, heads a party of former anti-communist rebels who fought a brutal civil war with Frelimo from 1975 to 1992, devastating the economy and leaving almost one million people dead.
The opposition party took up arms again between 2013 and 2016, but tensions remained until Nyusi and Momade signed a peace deal in August.
Some experts fear the election could test the country’s fragile peace.
Alex Vines, the director of the Africa programme at the Chatham House thinktank, wrote in a report in September that the polls “could make or break this new elite bargain”.
Ericino de Salema, of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, described the election as “a test for democracy”. “For the first time, the political geography of the country may change substantially. It may even lead to confrontation,” he said.
The six-week election campaign was one of the most violent in the country’s turbulent history, with candidates threatened, election material destroyed, and deadly clashes breaking out.
The opposition has already accused Frelimo of tampering with the vote. Enrolment has more than doubled in the south-eastern Gaza province, a Frelimo bastion.
Last week, the head of a local election observation mission was shot dead by members of a special police unit in Gaza’s capital, Xai-Xai.
Lutero Simango, an MP for the country’s third biggest party, MDM, accused Frelimo of “using all state means, including police and secret services, to intimidate people”.
Frelimo suffered its worst result at the local elections of 2018 – 51.8 percent – and has been severely weakened in recent years.
In 2016, it was revealed the government secretly borrowed $2bn, sparking the worst financial crisis in the country’s history and uncovering a vast corruption network with links to the regime.
The government is also battling to recover from two devastating cyclones in March, which displaced nearly 2 million people. Economic growth is estimated at about 2 percent, well below the average of previous years and the lowest level since 2000. A complex insurgency by a little-known group of Islamic extremists in the far northern Muslim-majority Cabo Delgado province has killed more than 300 people and delayed the development of vast gas reserves that is hoped to put billions in state coffers and lift millions out of poverty.
Twelve people were killed in an attack on a village last month by extremists. The government said nine “evildoers” had died in a military operation last week. – The Guardian.
