Landmark Angola poll as Dos Santos quits
THE EU will not be sending an observation team to monitor Angola’s legislative elections tomorrow, which will see President Jose Eduardo dos Santos step down after 38 years as president.
Defence Minister Joao Lorenco will be running as the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) candidate after the party’s leader, Dos Santos, decided not to run due to illness.
The EU said earlier it had cancelled plans to observe elections after Luanda failed to agree to conditions, including access to all parts of the country during the poll.
Angolan Foreign Minister Georges Chikoti said the EU had been invited to observe the elections, like a number of other organisations, but that no specific memorandum would be signed with it.
“We do not expect anyone to impose on us their way of looking at the elections and give us some lesson, just as we don’t hope to give lessons in terms of elections,” Chikoti said.
However, the Europeans will be sending a smaller team of no more than five experts to assess the poll.
Nevertheless, Dos Santos’s departure is significant. Angola has known only two leaders since it gained independence from former colonial power Portugal in 1975.
The elections will pit the MPLA against the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), which has been battling to gain control for more than 50 years.
Dos Santos has guided the country from hardline Marxism to a capitalism system which critics say is riddled with cronyism, nepotism and corruption.
Lorenco, 63, who is expected to win in a landslide, has pledged to fight the graft which he claims flourished under Dos Santos.
But activists and analysts caution that reform may be stymied since Dos Santos will still retain sweeping powers as the MPLA’s leader.
In addition, in July, the National Assembly approved legislation that would keep top officials in the army, police and intelligence services in place for eight years, preventing a new president from replacing them.
Twenty-five million Angolans live in grinding poverty despite the country’s enormous oil wealth and while Dos Santos’s daughter, Isabel, is reportedly Africa’s richest woman.
Following independence in 1975, the outbreak of civil war delayed the country’s first post-independence elections until 1980 in what was effectively a one-party state controlled by the MPLA.
The Bicesse Accords, which ended the civil war in 1991, heralded the introduction of a multi-party democracy.
The 220 members of the National Assembly are elected by closed list proportional representation and on a local constituency basis.
Voters must be at least 18 years old. Candidates must be at least 35 years old.
However, opposition group Unita has repeatedly complained of rigged elections and, according to some media reports, many former MPLA supporters are switching allegiance to the opposition.