After an almost complete counting, the MPLA, at the head of the country since 1975, prevails but has experienced a strong decline in front of Unita, the main opposition party.
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Forty-seven years after its accession to power, the popular Liberation Movement of Angola (MPLA) should maintain itself at the head of Angola. According to figures rendered by the National Electoral Commission (CNE) After counting 97.04 % of the bulletins, the party-state is at the top of the votes with 51.07 % of the votes before the National Union for the total independence of the ‘Angola (Unita) with 44.05 %, main opposition party and lifelong rival. The cumulative score of the other six training courses is around 5 %.
Never in the tormented history of Angola – the MPLA and the Unita clashed during a civil war which left 500,000 dead between 1975 and 2002 – the two parties had not been so close in the urns. Carried by a charismatic leader, Adalberto Costa Junior, 60, the former rebel movement even largely comes in the lead in Luanda, sprawling capital of this Lusophone country in southern Africa, with almost 62 % of the votes.
According to the Angolan Constitution, the head of the party’s list which wins the legislative elections is invested head of state. At 68, Joao Lourenço, former artillery general formed in the USSR, therefore remains at the presidential palace of Cidade Alta for a second term. But the MPLA, which controls the administration, the electoral process and the public media, has lost its hegemony. “Despite the victory, it is a defeat that the historic party records, analyzes Daniel Ribant, author of Força Angola (L’Harmattan). He loses votes throughout the country with the exception of Zaire province [in the extreme north of the country]. The nervousness within the party was also palpable during the last weeks of the campaign. “
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With Constance, Unita has made its opponent back from 10 points back at each ballot: the MPLA counted 82 % of the vote in 2008, 72 % in 2012 and 61 % in 2017. During the August 24 election, which took place “in compliance with international requirements”, according to the observers independent of the community of Portuguese language (CPLP), the dike did not give in but the MPLA no longer has the absolute majority in Parliament, where It takes more than two -thirds of the 220 seats to be able to pass bills without losing another party. With its 124 deputies, the Marxist-Leninist inspiration party will therefore have to learn to share its authority. He will have to do it with the 90 deputies of Unita, his sworn enemy.
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