Voters in Mozambique cast their ballots Wednesday for a new president and parliament, with the Frelimo party that has been ruling for 49 years expected to hold on to power.
The election comes amid political tension in the southern African nation which struggles with high levels of poverty and inequality, while jihadist violence in the north is holding back major gas projects.
Outgoing President Filipe Nyusi, 65, who steps down after a two-term limit, was among the first to vote as polling stations opened at 7:00 am (0500 GMT).
“I would also ask that no group of citizens agitates or threatens others, that everything happens in peace and tranquillity and that we avoid announcing the results ahead of time,” Nyusi said.
After municipal elections in 2023 were seen as fraudulent, protests erupted in major cities in which police killed several people.
Results in Wednesday’s vote, which will also choose provincial governors, are due in about two weeks.
The Frelimo candidate to replace Nyusi is the relatively unknown provincial governor, 47-year-old Daniel Chapo, who also called for calm after he cast his ballot.
His election would mark a generational change: he would be the first Mozambican president born after independence from Portugal in 1975 and the first not to have fought in the devastating 16-year civil war between Frelimo and the main opposition party Renamo.
Chapo’s main competition includes Renamo leader Ossufo Momade, 63.
Another contender is 50-year-old Venancio Mondlane, who lost a mayoral race in 2023 under Renamo’s banner and claimed widespread electoral fraud.
The charismatic Mondlane, popular among young voters, quit the party in June and joined forces with the smaller Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos).
The other main candidate is Lutero Simango, 64, president of the centre-right Mozambique Democratic Movement and an outspoken critic of Frelimo, whose leaders he describes as “thieves dressed in red”, the party’s colour.
‘We need change’
While analysts said they doubted the election would bring much change to the impoverished country, this is what many voters were hoping for.
“We need a change, we need things to work,” Leta Decastro, 43, told AFP at a polling station.
“I want the parliament to change,” said forest engineer Gisela Guambe, 42. “There is not enough debate in parliament now. The opposition needs a different presence.”
In 2019, opposition parties disputed the results that gave Frelimo 73 percent, denouncing what they said was electoral fraud.
“Nothing is going to change,” said Domingos Do Rosario, a political science lecturer at Maputo’s Eduardo Mondlane University, pointing to weak institutions and rife political bargaining.
The electoral commission “is a joke”, he told AFP ahead of polling day. “It manufactures voters,” he added, expressing doubt over the body’s claim to have registered 17 million voters from a largely young population of 33 million.
“The integrity of the electoral process is a serious problem,” said researcher Borges Nhamirre from Pretoria’s Institute for Security Studies.
Poverty, violence
More than 74 percent of Mozambique’s population lived in poverty in 2023, according to the African Development Bank.
The country had hoped for an economic boost from the discovery in 2010 of vast gas deposits in the north but jihadist violence in the northernmost Cabo Delgado province led ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies to suspend their projects.
The economy will need to be a priority for the government, said analyst Aleix Montana.
“The new president of Mozambique will have to tackle high levels of public debt and weak revenue inflows, as key energy projects continue to suffer delays due to the insurgency in Cabo Delgado,” he said.
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