Mozambique goes to the polls expecting little change

Daniel Chapo

Maputo – Mozambique votes for a president and parliament in a tense mood on Wednesday as jihadist violence stalls natural gas projects that could bring a major boost to its morose economy.

Barring any major surprises, the socialist Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) will hold on to government despite criticism and disillusion with the party in power since independence from Portugal half a century ago.

“We know Frelimo will be in the lead, they always are,” said Dulce Micas on the sidelines of an opposition rally near the capital Maputo. Outgoing president Filipe Nyusi, who has reached the end of a two-term limit, was certain of Frelimo’s staying power at the party’s final rally Sunday.

“We have no doubt, we are going to win!” said Nyusi, 65, urging voters to choose his designated successor, Daniel Chapo, a previously low-profile provincial governor.

“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 integrity of the electoral process is a serious problem,” said researcher Borges Nhamirre from Pretoria’s Institute for Security Studies.

The likely future president, 47-year-old Chapo, has little significant political or government experience. “He’s unknown,” Nhamirre said.

His choice as candidate may have been that Frelimo’s rival factions believed he could be influenced in his pick of appointees to the key positions of defence, finance and natural resources, Nhamirre said.

Fears of rigging 

Chapo’s election would mark a generational change: he would be the first Mozambican president born after independence and the first not to have fought in the devastating 1975-1992 war between Frelimo and anti-communist Renamo.

The last weeks of campaigning have seen the emergence of another fresh face, the charismatic Venancio Mondlane, 50, who quit Renamo in June after a leadership tussle.

A talented orator, he has inspired hope in younger voters. “He’s intelligent, he’s got common sense. I’d really like him to be elected,” said a 30-year-old woman selling dried fish who gave her name only as Olga.

“If the elections were free and fair, he would have a good chance of emerging as the new opposition leader, perhaps forcing a second round,” said Nhamirre.

The “completely discredited” electoral commission, headed by a former Anglican bishop considered too close to the government, may give Mondlane “10 percent of the vote, or even a little more, to avoid violence”, said an academic under condition of anonymity.

The commission “is a joke, it manufactures voters”, said Do Rosario, who believes the body’s claim to have registered 17 million voters from out of a largely young population of 33 million does not add up. “We can’t believe these figures,” he said.

The results of the 2023 municipal elections — when Frelimo was declared the winner in 64 of 65 municipalities — triggered protests in the major cities in which police “accidentally” killed several people.

There may be new protests in the weeks following Wednesday’s voting, Do Rosario warned.

“We are appealing for a fair and clear election so that we don’t have conflict afterwards,” Renamo candidate Ossufo Momade said at the party’s last rally on Sunday.

The Indian Ocean country, battered by cyclones and drought, is one of the poorest in the world with more than 74 percent of its people estimated to live in poverty in 2023.

The discovery in 2010 of vast offshore gas deposits had Mozambique poised to become one of the world’s top 10 exporters, but projects have been stalled since 2021 by violence from jihadist groups affiliated to the Islamic State group.

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Source: AFP

Picture: X/@PMugoMugo

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