Angola Election: Provisional results show MPLA ahead as vote counting begins

Provisional results on Thursday from ballot counting in the presidential election in Angola indicate the ruling party MPLA, in power for nearly five decades, holds a strong lead over the main opposition UNITA, which said the initial outcome was not reliable.

With 33 per cent of the votes counted, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) said the first provisional results showed the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), led since 2017 by President Joao Lourenco, garnered 60.65 per cent of the vote.

The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the opposition party led by Adalberto Costa Junior, received 33.85 per cent, CNE said.

Since independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola has been run by the MPLA.

Political analysts believed UNITA had its best-ever chance of victory as millions of youth left out of its oil-fuelled booms were likely to express frustration with nearly five decades of MPLA rule.

Abel Chivukuvuku, UNITA’s vice-presidential candidate, said the provisional results were not reliable and the party would publish its own based on a parallel vote count using the same data as the CNE.

“Tomorrow morning we will have clearer and more concrete indicators and whoever wants to celebrate will…I hope it’s us,” Chivukuvuku told a news conference.

The election was widely seen as the country’s most competitive in decades.

An Afrobarometer survey in May showed UNITA increasing its share to 22 per cent, from 13 per cent in 2019.

That is still seven points behind the MPLA, but nearly half of the voters were undecided. Many young people – under 25s make up 60 per cent of the southern African country – were voting for the first time.

Angola is Africa’s second-biggest oil producer, but as with many poor nations sitting on oil wealth, decades of pumping billions of barrels of crude has done little for most except jack up the cost of living.

(Reuters/NAN)