The crisis threatens the historic dominance of the Angolan government party in the general elections this Wednesday

Adalberto Costa, emerging in the presidential polls, wants to take advantage of youth weariness with almost half a century of dominance by the MPLA

Aug. 23 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Angola celebrates this Wednesday the closest elections since its independence from Portugal in 1975; elections marked by the crushing economic crisis that has suffocated the country’s youth and boosted opposition leader Adalberto Costa Junior in the polls, who hopes to end almost half a century of dominance by the historic Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), represented by the current president, Joao Lourenço, and the Dos Santos family.

The MPLA remains the clear favorite for victory — the latest Afrobarometer polls put it seven points ahead of Costa’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) — but right now half the population is undecided, in particular the young vote, crucial in these elections in a country where more than 60 percent of the population is under 24 years of age.

Moreover, the same Afrobarometer survey gave Costa a certain advantage in the country’s capital, Luanda, and his rallies have attracted tens of thousands of people, a sign that his image has permeated the population.

Costa intends to take advantage of youth discontent to become an emblem of political regeneration. Lourenço, it should be remembered, is a veteran MPLA member and former defense minister, who came to power in 2017 as the handpicked successor to José Eduardo dos Santos, whose authoritarian rule lasted 38 years.

However, Lourenço takes refuge in his efforts to denounce the corruption of the Dos Santos, as well as in his economic policies to encourage investment in the country as an example to preserve the trust of the people, eroded by the pandemic, the fall in prices of oil and the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We remind you of what this government has done for five years. Although we had to live with a pandemic, the people of Angola have been able to see the many new things that this mandate has brought, which shows that the MPLA is a serious party,” declared this weekend at his last campaign rally before hundreds of thousands of supporters on the outskirts of Luanda.

SHADOWS OF IRREGULARITIES

Although the elections will be supervised by several international observer missions, experts such as Borghes Nhamirre, from the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria (South Africa), warn of possible irregularities during the course of the elections.

For example, the National Electoral Commission has set a limit of just 2,000 observers to monitor more than 26,000 polling stations, and the country still fails to implement some of the recommendations of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Electoral Observation Mission, such as the creation of an independent electoral commission to organize voter registration instead of the Ministry of Territorial Administration, which is a government agency.

The economist from the Catholic University of Luanda Carlos Rosado de Carvalho, who has been carrying out communication studies on the campaign, lamented to Bloomberg that the state media have dedicated 95 percent of their electoral coverage to the government and ruling party.

UNITA has asked its supporters to maintain a presence around polling stations to ensure that voting and counting are fair. Although the party has ruled out an armed conflict, it has threatened street protests if there is an attempt to rig the elections.

Likewise, NGOs such as Amnesty International lament that “Angola has faced unprecedented repression of human rights, including unlawful killings and arbitrary arrests, in the run-up to the elections.”

The NGO accuses the security forces, during the height of the pandemic in 2020, of forcibly suppressing demonstrations against the restrictions, which resulted in the death of at least seven minors.

Likewise, in January 2021, the Police shot and killed dozens of activists who were peacefully protesting the high cost of living in the mining town of Cafunfo, in the province of Lunda Norte, the NGO denounces.