The results will give President Joao Lourenço a second five-year term (John Wessels/AFP)
The People’s Liberation Movement Party announced AngolaWho has been ruling the country non-stop for nearly 50 years, Friday, his victory in the elections conducted this week After the election commission said he had secured 51% of the vote, the leader of the main opposition coalition rejected the results.
Less than half of the registered voters cast their ballots in Wednesday’s election, which is certain to give President Joao Lourenço a second five-year term and extend the rule of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has ruled the southern African oil-producing country since its independence from Portugal in 1975.
The Electoral Commission said, on Thursday, following counting more than 97% of the votes, that the ruling party, which was a Marxist party at an earlier time, led the other parties by obtaining 51% of the votes, compared to 44.5% obtained by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) party. main opposition.
“We have already obtained another outright majority. We have a decent majority to govern without any kind of problem, and we will govern that way,” said Roy Falcao, spokesman for the MPLA party, at a press conference in the capital, Luanda.
But UNITA leader Costa Jr., who spoke to reporters and several of his supporters for the first time since the vote, dismissed what he called “brutal” discrepancies between the commission’s count and the opposition’s count.
“There is no doubt that the MPLA did not win the elections,” he said. “UNITA does not recognize interim results,” he added.
Wednesday’s elections in Angola are the most competitive to date, with the opposition winning an unprecedented number of seats in parliament.
Analysts fear that the dispute over the results might lead to violence by poor, frustrated young people who voted for Junior.
In the past, the ruling party and UNITA were anti-colonialists and fought an armed struggle once morest it, but they fought a civil war following independence that lasted 27 years and ended in 2002.
(Archyde.com)
