ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief historical background and a description of major events in Mozambique. It also provides basic political, economic, and social data arranged in the following categories: polity, economy, population, purchasing power parities, life expectancy, ethnic groups, capital, political rights, civil liberties, and status. The chapter discusses the progress and decline of political rights and civil liberties in Mozambique. Mozambicans are able to select their president and parliament through competitive electoral processes, although this freedom is constrained by the social, political, and economic ravages of years of civil war, in addition to a lack of familiarity with democratic practices. In 1994, the first multiparty elections were held. The elections attracted a 90 percent turnout and were judged a resounding success by Mozambicans and the international community despite a last-minute preelection boycott call by Mozambique National Resistance, which accused Front for the Liberation of Mozambique of fraud.
