More than ten million Mozambicans are registered to vote in today’s poll which is the closest in forty years of independence.

Frelimo, that’s ruled the country for all this time, has put up a no-change candidate Felipe Nyusi who’s favoured to replace president Armando Guebuza.

Today voting is a test of the country’s stability threatened when Afonso Dhlakama went back to the bush two years ago.

He’s leading Renamo into a fifth election, and the party’s in danger of losing its official opposition status to the Movement for a Democratic Mozambique led by former Beira mayor Daviz Simango.

In such a closely contested race, watched by more than 1 000 observers at the 17 000 polling stations, it’s important that the loser should accept defeat.

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Frelimo’s Felipe Nyusi is expected to win the contest and replace Armando Guebuza as president. Ends intro

The real race is between Afonso Dhlakama’s Renamo and the breakaway Mozambique Democratic Movement for Daviz Simango for the role of official opposition.

Mozambique, once the poorest country on the planet, is experiencing a resources boom.

It’s people expect this to create jobs and break the inequality that grips the country.

More than 1000 observers from the region and further abroad are in the country for the fifth election since the end of the civil war in 1992.

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The Mozambique Democratic Movement is a breakaway from the Renamo movement which went back the bush in 2012 — twenty years after fighting an exhausting 16-year war against the ruling Frelimo party.

MDM leader Daviz Simango has been quietly focussing on growing his support base.

He maintains his movement’s different from the others.

It doesn’t have an armed tradition.

The MDM surprised observers by beating Frelimo in four cities in last year’s municipal polls.

Simango says its vital that whoever loses tomorrow’s election should accept defeat.

Frelimo’s favoured to win but the MDM could replace Renamo as the official opposition.

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