Ex-Rebel Calls Off Boycott of Mozambique Vote

The former rebel leader in this African nation called off a failed boycott of Mozambique’s first multi-party election Friday and then voted with a broad smile.

Officials added an extra day of voting today to the scheduled two-day election amid optimism that this impoverished, war-torn country had surmounted one more hurdle in its quest for democracy and peace.

Voting continued peacefully Friday, with only a few polling stations in the central and northern provinces reporting delays. Election officials said half the 6.3 million registered voters had cast ballots Thursday, the first day of voting.

The U.N.-arranged vote is Mozambique’s first free election since the leftist Mozambique Liberation Front, or Frelimo, took over after independence from Portugal in 1975.

Civil war broke out in 1977 between Frelimo and the rebel Mozambique National Resistance, or Renamo. About 600,000 people died in war, famine and disease, and the economy was wrecked before a peace pact was signed in 1992.

Renamo and Frelimo are expected to win almost all of the 250 Parliament seats. President Joaquim Chissano of Frelimo was favored to win the presidency and indicated that he would give Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama a government post.

U.N. and Western officials rushed to save the 2-year-old peace process after Renamo announced hours before polls opened Thursday that it would boycott the vote to protest alleged irregularities.

But Friday morning, Dhlakama, flanked by U.N. special envoy Aldo Ajello, announced that Renamo would participate and accept any result judged free and fair by the international community.

“It is my victory to have the election in Mozambique,” he said in a Maputo polling station crowded with reporters and U.N. election observers. He lowered his folded ballot slowly into the box, smiling for photographers.