MAPUTO, Oct 07 (AFP): Impoverished Mozambique votes for a president and parliament in a tense mood 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.
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.
