Angola’s ruling MPLA party wins narrow election victory as opposition questions results

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The ruling MPLA party has narrowly won Angola’s election with 51 per cent of the vote, its worst performance in any vote in its nearly half-century in power, according to officially released results.

Opposition leaders and independent analysts immediately cast doubt on the results on Thursday and reported a series of irregularities, suggesting the Angolan government had manipulated this week’s election to ensure the MPLA would remain in power.

With 97 per cent of the votes counted, the election commission announced on Thursday night that the MPLA had won 51 per cent of the parliamentary seats, while the main opposition UNITA party had 44 per cent.

The official results mean that President Joao Lourenco will be installed for a second five-year term of office. But it also confirms the long-term decline in the ruling party’s popularity. After winning 82 per cent in the 2008 election, its margin fell in every subsequent election, dropping to 61 per cent in the past election in 2017.

The opposition has won a strong majority of votes in Angola’s capital, Luanda, according to the official results. It means the MPLA’s popular base is increasingly shifting to rural areas, while urban voters show their discontent with the government.

The MPLA has dominated Angola since the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975, despite decades of sporadic civil war that finally ended in 2002. But many Angolans are increasingly unhappy with the widespread poverty and inequality in the oil-rich country.

Angola is the second-biggest oil producer in Africa, but most of its population earns less than $2.50 a day. In recent years, inflation has soared and the national currency has collapsed, while the poverty rate has spiralled up.

Leaders of UNITA criticized the official election results and said their own tallies showed the ruling party had lost. Analysts predicted that UNITA will go to court to challenge the results, although Angola’s judiciary is heavily government-controlled and highly unlikely to rule against the MPLA victory.

The results could also trigger protests in the streets, but Angola’s police have routinely used tear gas and violence to suppress anti-government demonstrations. About 80,000 police officers have been mobilized across the country to ensure that any postelection unrest is quickly crushed. The streets have been largely calm so far.

The Angolan election and an earlier election in Kenya this month have shown two contrasting sides of Africa’s democracies. While the Kenyan election was relatively transparent, allowing a victory by a presidential candidate who opposed the incumbent, Angola’s election was far more opaque and government-controlled, making it almost impossible for the opposition to win.

In most Southern African countries, as in Angola, the liberation movements that took power after the colonial and apartheid eras are still ruling their countries today, despite growing signs of corruption and mismanagement.

Election observers in Angola noted that many polling stations did not post the voting results on their doors, as the law required. Instead, municipal authorities sent a vote count to the capital, where the tallying was centralized at a tightly guarded site where the opposition had no access. The election commission is largely dominated by partisan pro-government figures.

Angolan political analyst Claudio Silva said there were “stunning irregularities” in the vote-tallying process. Many Angolan voters were shocked by the election commission’s announcement of the first partial results, which was done hastily and without any details, Mr. Silva said on Twitter on Thursday.

The commission did not take any questions from the media when it announced the first results on Wednesday night. State television coverage of the announcements was tilted in favour of state propaganda that endorsed the ruling party’s victory, Mr. Silva said.

Despite the biased process, the official results confirmed that the opposition now has “massive” support in urban areas, while the MPLA had a clear advantage in rural regions, he said.

This suggests that the ruling party will increasingly become a rural-based movement in the future, while the opposition will dominate the cities.

The main opposition leader, UNITA’s Adalberto Costa Junior, drew huge crowds to his campaign rallies across the country. Opposition supporters, energized by the campaign, were more vigilant on election day than ever before. Many posted photos of the scenes at polling stations, closely monitoring whether the voting results were publicly accessible or not.

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