Tuesday, October 14, 2014

FRELIMO Ruling Party Seeks Another Victory in Mozambique Presidential Elections
FRELIMO ruling party candidate Filipe Nyusi. 
Agency Staff

Opposition parties seek to appeal to voters dissatisfied with the status quo

CESAR Bila spends his days mending and polishing shoes on the streets of Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, as an economic boom passes him by.

“I hear about many investors coming, but it means nothing for me or my family,” Mr Bila, a father of four who has not had a formal job since 1990, said in an October 8 interview in Inhagoia, a Maputo slum. “I worry about rainy days when there’s no money to be made in the street.”

Mozambique’s newfound wealth is the result of an influx of foreign companies including Vale, Rio Tinto, Eni and Anadarko Petroleum looking to tap new coal and gas finds.

The fact that few have benefited from their presence may erode support for the ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), in elections on Wednesday, according to IHS Country Risk analyst Robert Besseling.

“There is a perception of unfair distribution of wealth, corruption and mismanagement of public services,” he says. “Rising inequality is certainly fuelling disappointment with Frelimo.”

While growth in the southern African nation is expected to accelerate to 8.1% this year from an annual average of 7.4% over the past decade, according to International Monetary Fund data, its 26-million people remain among the world’s most impoverished.

It ranks 178th of 187 countries in the latest United Nations Human Development index.

Should Italy’s Eni and Woodlands, Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum press ahead with plans to tap offshore gas reserves estimated at 250-trillion cubic feet, Mozambique may become the world’s third-largest gas producer by 2018.

About 90% of Mozambicans live on less than $2 a day, down from 97% in 2000, a Standard Bank study on August 19 showed. It classified 5.8-million households, covering 95% of the population, as low income, meaning they consumed less than $15 a day.

“The issue about how to distribute resources from the expected revenue boom is significant in the elections, with opposition parties seeking to appeal to voters dissatisfied with the status quo,” Control Risks Africa analyst Thomas Hansen says.

Mozambique’s development deficit stems from its conflict-ridden history.

Frelimo waged a 10-year guerrilla war against colonial ruler Portugal before it won power in 1975.

After independence civil war broke out between Frelimo and the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), which was backed by the white-minority governments of SA and Rhodesia, now majority-ruled Zimbabwe. The violence brought the economy to a near standstill before a peace agreement was signed in Rome in 1992.

Sporadic fighting that resumed in central Mozambique in 2012 ended last month after the government agreed to integrate Renamo fighters into the army and give the party a greater say in overseeing the elections.

Frelimo captured 75% of the vote in national elections in 2009, while its leader Armando Guebuza won a second and final term as president by a similar margin. Its main challengers in the contest for the 250 parliamentary seats are Renamo, which secured 18% support in the last vote, and the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), which won 4%.

The presidential elections will be a three-way contest between Frelimo’s Filipe Nyusi, a former defence minister, Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama and the MDM’s Daviz Simango, the mayor of the second-biggest city, Beira.

“Frelimo is likely to be victorious in the polls, partly because of the nature of its support base and the links it has with the state,” Mr Hansen says.

Frelimo has pledged to stick with existing policies geared to investment and boosting growth, while improving access to education, clean water, jobs and healthcare. Renamo says it will ensure a more efficient civil service, defence force and judiciary, and the MDM promises to give Mozambicans greater benefit from the country’s mineral wealth.

Bloomberg

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