“A UNITA win would mean a distancing of Angola from Russia,” Charles Ray, head of the Africa Programme at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told Reuters, but only if it can consolidate power over a pro-Russian military first. He lambasted UNITA for wanting to show it “stands with the West, the so-called civilised countries”. Russian Ambassador Vladimir Tararov was quoted in Angolan media in March as praising Angola for its neutrality in abstaining from the United Nations resolution condemning the Ukraine war. He also travelled to Brussels and Washington to build ties with Western partners before the elections. UNITA condemned “the invasion of Ukraine by Russia”, Costa Junior said on Twitter. If UNITA pulls off a win, its victory could weaken decades of close ties with Moscow, for whom the MPLA was a Cold War proxy during Angola’s 27-year civil war which ended in 2002. “Voting is over, the vote count continues and we cannot have any predictions on the final results until this is concluded,” CNE spokesperson Lucas Quilunda said.Ī report by the Institute for Security Studies said that if an MPLA win is perceived as fraudulent, unrest could follow. The announcement of the provisional results was not expected so soon. Tweaked vote-counting rules were expected to delay official results by days, analysts had said. The electoral commission earlier said there had been no disturbances that could jeopardise the process. They get richer, and we suffer,” he said, echoing the sentiments of other young voters around him. I told them I would vote and sit down,” said Severano Manuel, 28, in Cacuano, outside Luanda. UNITA urged voters to stay near polling stations after casting their ballots, a call many seemed to be heeding as polls closed in the evening. Many voters were less confident in Angolan democracy.Īn activist monitoring group, Mudei Movement, has taken pictures of results sheets at as many polling stations as possible, fearing the fraud that marred past polls. “The people have nothing - no water, no light, kids eat from rubbish bins,” a 59-year-old former military officer told the Reuters news agency after voting in the neighbourhood of Nova Urbanizacao. Half of Angolans live in poverty, and more than half of under-25s are unemployed. Many young people - under 25s make up 60 percent of the southern African country - were voting for the first time.Īngola is Africa’s second-biggest oil producer, but as with many developing nations sitting on oil wealth, decades of pumping billions of barrels of crude has done little for most except jack up the cost of living. That was still seven points behind the MPLA, but nearly half of voters were undecided. The election was widely seen as the country’s most competitive in decades.Īn Afrobarometer survey in May showed UNITA increasing its share to 22 percent, from 13 percent in 2019. “Tomorrow morning we will have clearer and more concrete indicators and whoever wants to celebrate will … I hope it’s us,” Chivukuvuku told a news conference. Political analysts believed UNITA had its best-ever chance of victory yet as millions of youth left out of its oil-fuelled booms were likely to express frustration with nearly five decades of MPLA rule.Ībel Chivukuvuku, UNITA’s vice-presidential candidate, dismissed the provisional results and said the party would publish its own based on a parallel vote count using the same data as the CNE. Since independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola has been run by the MPLA. The MPLA has been led since 2017 by President Joao Lourenco.ĬNE said the opposition National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which is led by Adalberto Costa Junior, received 33.85 percent, however, UNITA said the initial count was not reliable. UNITA dismissed the first provisional results announced by the commission earlier on Thursday as unreliable. The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola’s (UNITA), the opposition party led by Adalberto Costa Junior, did not immediately respond. The election commission said on Thursday that 86% of ballots had so far been counted, which suggested that former Marxist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was likely to extend its near five-decade stint in power - giving President Joao Lourenço a second five-year term. Most votes in Angola’s parliamentary elections have been counted and provisional results show that the ruling MPLA party is ahead with a 52% majority, while their main opposition rivals have 42%.
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