Election officials in Mozambique are tabulating the votes fromWednesday's national elections. They say preliminary indications arethat voter turnout was high.
Thehead of the National Electoral Commission's technical unit, FelisbertoNaife, says most of the country's polling stations had finishedcounting their ballots and no major incidents had been reported onelection day.
He says the process was normal, peaceful andorderly. Many people voted and therefore he is certain that turnoutwill be higher than it was five years ago when it reached only 36percent.
He says the results are being sent to district centers and provisional results should be released beginning next week.
Anofficial of the observer mission of the Southern African DevelopmentCommunity, Kasuka Mutukwa, said preliminary observations of theballoting were positive.
"It has been very peaceful," he said."People stood in long queues, including young people. So we are waitingfor the figures of what the turn-out is but certainly it was quiteimpressive what we saw preliminarily."
The head of the EuropeanUnion observer team, Fiona Hall, said her group noted some technicaldifficulties, such as missing voting materials, but action was usuallybeing taken to solve the problem.
"There was a good level ofscrutiny of the process," said Hall. "Ninety-five percent of thepolling stations that we observed had some party officials present and80 percent of them had some domestic observers to scrutinize theprocess."
President Armando Guebuza is running for a secondfive-year term and his Frelimo party is expected to win a majority ofthe 250 seats in parliament.
Veteran opposition leader AfonsoDhlakama is running for the fourth time. His Renamo party is beingchallenged for the leadership of the opposition by a new party.
TheMozambique Democratic Movement was founded by the mayor of Beira, DavizSimango, after he was expelled from Renamo last year.
These arethe fourth national elections since Frelimo and Renamo ended a bittercivil war in 1992. One million people died in the 16-year conflict andmillions more were displaced.
Professor Gil Lauriciano ofMaputo's Institute for International Relations says Mozambicandemocracy still bears the scars of the war.
"It is fragile,fragile in a way," he said. "It is a first experience. It is going totake a little while. Our rhetoric is still more like, military."
Hesays the political system is still evolving. And it will take time forthe polarization to ease and for people to understand that they candisagree in a civil manner.