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Angola Ruling Party Near Election Win Angola Ruling Party Near Election Win
(about 4 hours later)
LUANDA, Angola (Reuters) — The ruling party of President José Eduardo dos Santos was headed on Saturday for an expected comfortable win in national elections, with 74.46 percent of the vote after more than half of the ballots had been counted, electoral officials said. LUANDA, Angola — Angola’s governing party was poised on Saturday to sweep parliamentary elections, winning a landslide victory that would ensure President José Eduardo dos Santos a five-year extension to his 33 years at the country’s helm.
Provisional results from the National Electoral Commission put the ruling party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, well ahead of its nearest rivals with results in from nearly 60 percent of polling stations. Opposition leaders had criticized Friday’s vote as one-sided and plagued with irregularities. Despite widespread discontent over inequality and corruption in Angola, Africa’s second-largest oil-producing nation, Mr. dos Santos’s party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, had won nearly three-quarters of the votes cast on Friday, according to the National Electoral Commission, which announced preliminary results Saturday afternoon based on the 60 percent of ballots that had been counted.
Under the constitution, a win by the ruling party means that Mr. dos Santos, 70, is re-elected for another five-year term. He has already served nearly 33 years as president of Angola, Africa’s second-largest oil producer. The main opposition party, Unita, won less than 20 percent of the vote. The president is chosen from the party that wins the most votes; there is no separate popular vote for president.
The provisional results announced Saturday gave the party’s closest challenger — the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola , a former rebel group — 17.94 percent. Voter turnout appeared to be significantly lower than it was in 2008, when Angolans last went to the polls: fewer than 60 percent of eligible voters turned out. Opposition officials and some international observers said there were significant irregularities; for example, some voters were told that they were registered to vote hundreds of miles from their homes.
Angola has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing countries in the past decade, driven by its vast offshore oil reserves. It suffered through decades of civil war until the death of Jonas Savimbi, a rebel leader, in 2002 ended the fighting for good. The war left a broken, impoverished nation. The governing party quickly embarked on a Chinese-style infrastructure-building spree, and some parts of the country have been vastly transformed. The capital is dotted with skyscrapers and laced with glassy highways.
But inequality and poverty remain stubbornly high. So do prices. Inflated by oil wealth, they eat away the paychecks of those lucky enough to have jobs. Even in wealthy areas of Luanda, the capital, people install their own water tanks and generators because the government supply is unreliable.
In 2011, a largely leaderless protest movement inspired by the Arab Spring and fueled by rap stars sent young people pouring into the streets. The government cracked down, roughing up and arresting protesters. Veterans of the long civil war followed suit, angry that their pensions had not been paid.
The silver-haired Mr. dos Santos is Africa’s second-longest-serving leader, in office longer than even Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe.