Provisional results on Thursday from ballot counting in Angola’s election indicate the ruling party MPLA, in power for nearly five decades, holds a strong lead over the main opposition UNITA, which said the initial outcome was unreliable.

With 33 per cent of the votes counted, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) said the first provisional results showed the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), led since 2017 by President Joao Lourenco, garnered 60.65 per cent of the vote.

The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the opposition party led by Adalberto Costa Junior, received 33.85 per cent, CNE said.

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, said the provisional results were not reliable, and the party would publish its own based on a parallel vote count using the same data as the CNE.

“Tomorrow morning, we will have clearer and more concrete indicators and whoever wants to celebrate will…I hope it’s us,” Mr Chivukuvuku told a news conference.

The election was widely seen as the country’s most competitive in decades.

An Afrobarometer survey in May showed UNITA increasing its share to 22 per cent, from 13 per cent in 2019.

That is still seven points behind the MPLA, but nearly half of the voters were undecided. Many young people – under 25s make up 60 per cent of the southern African country – were voting for the first time.

Angola is Africa’s second-biggest oil producer, but as with many poor nations sitting on oil wealth, decades of pumping billions of barrels of crude has done little for most except jack up the cost of living.

Half of Angolans live in poverty, and more than half of the under-25s are unemployed. In the capital Luanda, one of the world’s most expensive cities, jobless people ply petty trade in trash-strewn streets overshadowed by skyscrapers.

“The people have nothing – no water, no light, kids eat from rubbish bins,” a 59-year-old former military officer who gave his name as Salomão told Reuters after voting in the neighbourhood of Nova Urbanização.

President João Lourenco, seeking a second five-year term, urged voters to go out and do the same after casting his ballot at Lusiada University in Luanda.

“In the end, we will all win, democracy wins, and Angola wins,” Mr Lourenco told reporters.

Many voters were less confident in Angolan democracy.

An activist monitoring group, Mudei Movement, has taken pictures of results sheets at as many polling stations as possible, fearing the fraud that marred past polls.

UNITA urged voters to stay near polling stations after casting their ballots, a call many seemed to be heeding as polls closed in the evening.

“The police said to vote and go home. I told them I would vote and sit down,” said Severano Manuel, 28, in Cacuano, outside Luanda, he said, echoing the sentiments of other young voters around him. “School is awful. The health system is awful. They get richer, and we suffer.” 

(NAN)