General elections took place on Wednesday 24 August in Angola. A total of 14 million voters went to the polls to elect members of the National Assembly and the President of the Republic. The day after the elections, the national electoral commission announced the provisional results which gave a victory to the MPLA, the party of the outgoing president, João Lourenço with 51.7%. Unita follows with 44.5%.
In the evening of Thursday 25 August, NEC spokesperson Lucas Quilunda announced the results of the Angolan general elections. “The MPLA has 51.7% of the votes, which gives it 124 deputies. Unita with 44.5% of the votes has 90 deputies in Parliament”.
A total of seven political parties and one coalition were in the running. The remaining votes are shared between the other six political groups. Thus, the all-powerful party, the MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola), which has governed the country since 1975, is still in power with more than 97% of the ballots counted on Thursday evening and thus accounts for 51.07% of the votes, according to the electoral commission. As for Unita, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, the main opposition party chaired by Adalberto Costa Junior, it achieved a historic score by winning 90 seats.
However, the party does not seem willing to accept these results. Those in charge of the training claim that they did not obtain the same results as the commission. But “we are not encouraging rebellion, the process is not over, we must remain calm”, stressed Anastacio Ruben Sicato, a member of the party during a press conference held on Thursday.
In Africa’s second largest oil-producing country after Nigeria, after the legislative elections, the candidate of the party or coalition with the majority in the National Assembly automatically becomes President of the Republic.
