Chissano won the presidency with a margin of four percentage points over the RENAMO-UE coalition candidate, Afonso Dhlakama, and began his five-year term in January 2000. FRELIMO increased its majority in the National Assembly with 133 out of 250 seats, whereas RENAMO-UE won 116 seats, one seat went independent, and no third parties were represented. 109. The opposition coalition did not accept the National Election Commission’s results of the presidential vote and filed a formal complaint with the Supreme Court. One month after the voting, the court dismissed the opposition’s challenge and validated the election results. 110. In May 2004, the government approved a new general election law containing innovations based on the experience of the municipal elections of 2003. The third general election was held from 1–2 December 2004. FRELIMO candidate Armando Emilio Guebuza won with 64 per cent of the popular vote, while his opponent, Afonso Dhlakama of RENAMO, received 32 per cent of the votes. The estimated turnout of 44 per cent was well below the turnout of almost 70 per cent in the 1999 general election. FRELIMO won 160 seats in parliament and a coalition of RENAMO and several small parties won the remaining 90 seats. Armando Guebuza was inaugurated as the President on 2 February 2005. 111. Local elections took place in Mozambique’s 43 municipalities on 19 November 2008. FRELIMO mayoral candidates won 42 of the 43 contested seats. Presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for late 2009. 112. All these changes have established a framework for governance and administration based on the democratic principles of representation, political equality, limitations on state power, and extended political participation. This has contributed to Mozambique’s “turnaround” in the form of a lasting cessation of violent conflict and sustained economic growth. 2.2 The Economy 113. Following the departure of most of the Portuguese settler population which, at the peak of the colonial period numbered around 250 000 people, the economy of Mozambique came to a virtual standstill after experiencing a very sharp drop in economic activity. In response to this situation, in the late 1970s the post-independence FRELIMO government adopted a strategy of central planning of the economy, aimed at achieving rapid economic growth and ending underdevelopment by the 1990s. The strategy failed to achieve these goals, partly due to its unrealistic nature, but also to the multiple economic and political constraints the country faced after independence. This led the government to adopt a comprehensive agenda of economic liberalisation and reform in the mid-1980s, which has continued to the present. 67