Angola’s main opposition party challenges election results

LUANDA, Angola

Angola’s main opposition party on Tuesday submitted a legal complaint challenging the electoral commission’s finding that the governing party won last week’s election, Reuters reported.

After the most closely fought election since independence from Portugal in 1975, the commission declared the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) the winner, prolonging its nearly five decades of uninterrupted rule and handing President Joao Lourenco a second term.

The commission said Lourenco and the MPLA won 51 percent of the vote.

Opposing party UNITA leader Adalberto Costa Junior has repeatedly said in the past few days that he does not recognise the results of the vote and that complaints have been filed.

"UNITA reiterates that it will not recognise the results announced by the National Electoral Commission until the complaints already in its possession are resolved,” the party said in its Tuesday statement.

Under Angola’s rules, if UNITA wishes to challenge the results it must first lodge a complaint with the commission. If that is rejected, the party can take the matter to the Constitutional Court, which must rule within 72 hours.

Angola’s Constitutional Court is led by Laurinda Cardoso, a former MPLA member who was appointed by Lourenco in August 2021. Analysts say the MPLA controls the court but Lourenco says it exercises its powers independently.

Former Constitutional Court President Manuel Aragao resigned last year after he voted against constitutional amendments which he described as the “suicide of the democratic rule and law”.

Angolan political analyst Edmilson Angelo said UNITA was likely to eventually accept defeat but would continue to reject the gap in votes.

"This will allow them to be coherent with their position on the electoral process while at the same time soften the feeling of disruption which may erupt,” Angelo said.

Analysts say any dispute could ignite street protests but that has not happened so far.

The MPLA and UNITA, formerly anti-colonial guerrilla groups, were on opposing sides of the post-independence civil war that lasted until 2002 when Angolan troops killed UNITA’s rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi.

Lourenco has pledged to press on with reforms in his second term, including privatising poorly run state assets and continuing to clean up corruption after investigating wealthy and powerful members of the dos Santos family.

The MPLA’s Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died in Spain in July, had ruled Angola from 1979 until 2017 when he handed power to Lourenco.

Lourenco’s reforms have so far failed to create a fairer distribution of Angola’s vast oil wealth – it is Africa’s second-largest producer – which remains mostly in the hands of a few well-connected MPLA officials.