OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maputo | Friday 9.50am.
POLLS for the country’s second democratic elections opened in Mozambique on Friday with President Joaquim Chissano expected to win re-election, but possibly lose control of parliament to the former rebel movement Renamo.
The two-day presidential and general elections, the second democratic polls since Mozambique’s independence in 1975, began early this morning at more than 8300 polling stations.
Large numbers of policemen have been deployed to prevent any possible unrest. The army was not called out to help provide security.
The only challenge to Chissano in the presidential race is former rebel leader Afonso Dhlakama, who led a 16-year civil war against the then-Marxist Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) until a 1992 peace pact and the nation’s first elections in 1994.
While the head of state is widely expected to keep the job, analysts and diplomats say that Frelimo faces a serious parliamentary threat from Dhlakama’s Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo) in the legislative vote.
Dhlakama, whose movement has formed an electoral alliance with nine other opposition parties, has accused Chissano of adopting a “communist” attitude that is against power-sharing.
Renamo currently holds 112 parliamentary seats to Frelimo’s 129, and the current alliance with nine other parties is the greatest challenge yet to the governing party, which renounced Marxism more than a decade ago.