Mozambique's ruling Frelimo party heading to landslide victory

Mozambique's ruling Frelimo party is expected to win a landslide victory in the presidential and legislative elections, preliminary results showed Thursday.

Frelimo's presidential candidate Filipe Nyusi will win with 60 percent of the total votes, compared with the 75 percent won by the party's candidate in the 2009 elections, Xinhua reported citing the projections.

Initial results also suggested that the opposition Renamo's candidate Afonso Dhlakama came second with 32 percent, followed by Daviz Simango of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), another opposition party, with 8 percent.

For parliament seats, the projections suggested that Frelimo will win 57 percent of the votes, equivalent to 142 seats in the new parliament, while Renamo will win 30 percent or 75 seats and the MDM 12 percent or 31 seats.

In 2009, Frelimo won 191 seats in the 250-member parliament. As for Renamo, Dhlakama's percentage of the vote seems set to double when compared with the 2009 figure, while the Renamo's parliamentary group will likely get a boost from the current 51.

In the current parliament, the MDM only holds eight seats, largely because the party was only able to stand in four constituencies in 2009. Standing in all constituencies this time, the MDM is likely to see the number of its parliamentarians rise to over 30.

Nearly 9 percent of the 17,010 polling stations have finished counting and the turnout is projected to be over 50 percent, compared with 45 percent in 2009, according to the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE).