The recently concluded Presidential polls in Angola has revealed the MPLA party had been declared the winner of the closely fought election which would also be extending its decades-long rule in the oil-rich country thereby giving President Joao Lourenco a second term in office as President.
Some of the Official results which had been announced by the National Electoral Commission (CNE) had reported the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola won 51.17 percent of the ballots against 43.95 percent for the main challenger the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
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“The CNE proclaims Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco, president of the republic,” commission head Manuel Pereira da Silva told a press conference.
The vote was the tightest in Angola’s history.
Results in past elections have been contested — a process that can take several weeks.
UNITA — a former rebel movement that fought a bitter 27-year civil war against the MPLA government that ended in 2002 — had earlier rejected provisional results. UNITA leader Adalberto Costa Junior, had also last week called for an international panel to review the count from the elections.
The MPLA has traditionally wielded control over the electoral process as well as state media, and opposition and civic groups have in recent days raised fears of voter tampering. The party which is a former liberation movement, has ruled Angola since independence from Portugal in 1975.
But it has seen a steady decline in support over recent elections.
In another report, Angolans and a quite a number of African leaders gathered yesterday for the state funeral of former strongman president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, whose nearly four-decade rule of the oil-rich nation was inundated with allegations of plunder and nepotism.
The ceremony took place in the capital Luanda on a day that would have been dos Santos’s 80th birthday, and comes days after his party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), saw its worst results at the polls in the most hotly contested elections since independence.
Dos Santos will be buried today with military honours — there will be cannon fire and a minute’s silence.
Family and MPLA members are expected to speak at the ceremony led by President Joao Lourenco in Luanda’s Praca da Republica.