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Maputo - Mozambicans vote on Wednesday in elections that are expected to see the dominant Frelimo party maintain power in one of Africa's fastest-growing economies, that is looking to escape years of poverty and conflict by tapping into its huge energy resources.
Polling stations opened at 05:00 GMT and more than 10 million voters were registered to take part in the elections for a new president, parliament and provincial assemblies.
Foreign donors and investors hope the ballot will help to bury old animosities still lingering from a 1975-1992 civil war fought between Frelimo and its old foe Renamo.
Ordinary Mozambicans say they want whoever wins the vote to use the country's newly discovered resources of coal and natural gas to end poverty and inequality and to create more jobs.
"The leaders must think of the people, they must know how to invest the resources," said engineering student Helder Mesquita, 24, walking to a polling station with his wife and infant son.
Frelimo is a former Marxist liberation movement that has ruled Mozambique since independence in 1975 and its presidential candidate, former defence minister Filipe Nyusi, is campaigning hard to maintain the party's grip on power.
However, he is facing a tough challenge from both the Renamo leader and former rebel chief Afonso Dhlakama and from a rising third force in the former Portuguese colony - Daviz Simango and his Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM).
The election, the fifth presidential vote since a 1992 peace deal ended the civil war, is "the most competitive in the history of the country", John Stremlau, vice-president of peace programmes at the Atlanta-based Carter Center, told Reuters.
Stremlau is one of more than 1 000 international and African observers who will be monitoring Wednesday's voting, including envoys from the African Union and the European Union.
If Frelimo's Nyusi, 55, fails to secure more than 50% of the total ballots, he will face a deciding second round run-off with his nearest contender in which the anti-Frelimo votes would be united against him.
Whoever wins Mozambique's election will oversee the bringing into production of large-scale offshore natural gas and oil projects in the north of the Indian Ocean nation already being developed by investors including US oil major Anadarko Petroleum Corp and Italy's Eni.
The raging Ebola epidemic in three West African nations has cast a pall over the region and stoked global alarm, but Mozambique in the southeast, so far Ebola-free, is widely viewed as a bright prospect on the continent.
The country sits on coal reserves and has farming and fisheries potential. But it is among the world's least developed, and the majority of its more than 25 million people live in poverty.
However, the Inernational Monetary Fund sees gross domestic product growth topping 8% this year and investors are eyeing huge potential for development.
"The real test of this transition moment is whether the political leaders who have historically fought each other will think in terms of a government of national unity, so that you will have inclusivity in the aftermath," Stremlau told Reuters.
"To get there you need a peaceful, orderly election and a transparent process," Stremlau added. He noted all of the main political leaders had said that they would accept the result.
Calls for equality, inclusion
Renamo's Dhlakama and MDM's Simango concentrated their campaigns on attacking what they say is the stranglehold Frelimo has long maintained over political and economic power in Mozambique. They have promised more inclusive government.
"Mozambique belongs to everyone" was the slogan of MDM's Simango, 50, a Renamo defector and civil engineer who made a credible first showing in the 2009 presidential vote and whose party made gains in local government elections last year.
Such calls for greater political, economic and social inclusion find resonance with ordinary Mozambicans, many of whom are critical of outgoing Frelimo President Armando Guebuza, who is barred by the constitution from standing for a third term.
"Things are not going well ... There are no jobs, there is a lack of willingness to use our resources well," said Felipe Macias, 43, a security guard from central Sofala province.
Over two years leading up to the vote, Dhlakama's armed Renamo partisans clashed sporadically with the government army and police in the bush and ambushed traffic on a key north-south highway, frightening away tourists and triggering some concerns that Mozambique could slide back into a civil war.
The white-haired, bespectacled former guerrilla leader, who is 61, only emerged from a mountain hideout last month to ratify a deal with Guebuza reaffirming the 1992 peace pact that ended the civil war. He had previously accused the Frelimo government and military of trying to eliminate him.
Joaquim Tobias Dai, president of the Mozambican Association of Economists, said that managing popular expectations over the much-trumpeted coming hydrocarbons boom would be a challenge.
Dai told Reuters other global competitors were offering the same energy products - coal and natural gas - which Mozambique was counting on for its future. The new government needed to maximise benefits from these by seeking internal power uses and looking to African markets, besides overseas buyers like India.
"Whoever wins the election must have the strategy in place ... the next five years will determine a lot," he added.
