LUANDA: Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ ruling MPLA party headed yesterday for an expected comfortable win in national elections, with 74.46 percent after more than half the votes had been counted, electoral officials said.
Provisional results of Friday’s vote from the national elections commission put the MPLA well ahead of its nearest rivals with results in from nearly 60 percent of polling stations. The election had been criticized as one-sided and plagued with irregularities by opposition leaders.
Under the constitution, an MPLA win means Dos Santos, who turned 70 this week, is elected for a further 5-year term on top of the nearly 33 years he has already served as leader of Africa’s second largest oil producer.
The provisional results announced on Saturday gave the MPLA’s closest challenger, former rebel group UNITA, 17.94 percent, while the third-placed CASA-CE party had 4.53 percent.
The provisional turnout was just over 57 percent, the commission said.
It was only the third national election since Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975, and the second since the end a decade ago of a 27-year civil war.
Public health and incomes have improved, but 55 percent of the country still lives in abject poverty, often in shacks without electricity or running water.
Resentment among young Angolans, who enviously eye the luxurious new skyscrapers filling Luanda’s skyline, has sparked protests demanding that Dos Santos step down and calling for the nation’s oil wealth to be spread more evenly.
Protests in Angola are quickly and violently repressed, but they clearly rattled a government that never allows any show of dissent.
Santos’ party heads for Angola election win
