Most votes in Angola’s parliamentary elections have been counted and provisional results show that the ruling MPLA party is ahead with a 52% majority, while their main opposition rivals have 42%.
The election commission said on Thursday that 86% of ballots had so far been counted, which suggested that former Marxist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was likely to extend its near five-decade stint in power — giving President Joao Lourenço a second five-year term.
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola’s (UNITA), the opposition party led by Adalberto Costa Junior, did not immediately respond. UNITA dismissed the first provisional results announced by the commission earlier on Thursday as unreliable.
The MPLA has been led since 2017 by President Joao Lourenco.
CNE said the opposition National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which is led by Adalberto Costa Junior, received 33.85 percent, however, UNITA said the initial count was not reliable.
Since independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola has been run by the MPLA.
Political analysts believed UNITA had its best-ever chance of victory yet 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, dismissed the provisional results and said the party would publish its own based on a parallel vote count using the same data as the CNE.
BY ALJAZEERA