Angola’s ruling party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has ruled the oil-rich nation for nearly five decades, has a slender lead as vote counting begins after voters went to the polls on Wednesday.
So far, most votes in parliamentary elections have been counted and provisional results on Thursday morning show that the MPLA party is ahead with a 52% majority, while their main opposition rivals, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA),
have 42%.
The election commission also said that 86% of ballots had so far been counted, which suggested that the MPLA was likely to extend its near five-decade stay in power.
In what many international election observers say is the most tight and keenly contested elections in the country’s democratic history, incumbent President Joao Lourenco and the MPLA are facing the most serious challenge since the first multiparty elections in 1992.
Lourenco is squaring up against a very popular and charismatic opposition leader, Adalberto Costa Junior of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), who is giving the president real tight run.
Though eight political parties are running in the election, opinion polls indicate that the real contest lies between the MPLA and UNITA, its long-standing rival and ex-rebel movement.
The opinion polls also suggest that support for the MPLA which won 61 percent of the vote in the 2017 elections will dwindle, however, there are also indications that while the UNITA has made inroads, Costa Junior might not garner enough votes to unseat Lourenco who succeeded the late Jose Eduardo dos Santos.