Electorates in Angola, one of Africa’s oil-rich nations are out this Wednesday to decide who their next President would be.
About 14.3 million Angolan voters are expected to cast ballots to elect the country’s president and members of the National Assembly Wednesday.
The ruling MPLA has been in power for nearly five decades. It will be slugging it out with an opposition headed by Adalberto Costa Junior of the UNITA –promising a fresh start especially for dissatisfied youth.
Lourenço wrapped up his campaign on Monday, claiming to have built “a new Angola.”
“There have been exactly five years since the moment we started this mandate that is ending now,” he said at a campaign ceremony at the weekend. “We worked during this mandate to make Angola a new Angola, an Angola that is better accepted by the Angolans but also by the international community.”
The opposition leader Costa Junior has accused the ruling party of voter suppression and vote buying. He added that further acts inimical to true wishes of the electorates will have his party contesting the election result.
The UNITA candidate Costa Junior casting his vote in Luanda.
Pundits posit that there’s a huge amount of volatility and unpredictability, and the party in power has a lot of fear. A generation of Angolans born after the civil war (1975-2002) and the Angolan diaspora (of about 500,000) are voting for the first time.
This may favour UNITA, although the MPLA’s strong rural popularity and tight grip on state apparatus are expected to offer it an edge.
To observe the process, over 1,300 election observers are in Angola already.
The SADC mission considered that the process is running smoothly, highlighting the exemplary behaviour of voters.
Similarly, the African Union’s Election Observer Mission considered that voting is proceeding “very quickly and well”.