Africa News

credit: Aljazeera

The governing party in Angola has claimed victory in this week’s election after the electoral commission put its vote at 51 percent, but the leader of the main opposition coalition rejected the results.

Fewer than half of Angola’s registered voters turned out for Wednesday’s election, which appears certain to give President Joao Lourenco a second five-year term and extend the rule of the Marxist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, which has governed the southern African oil producer since independence from Portugal in 1975.

With more than 97 percent of the vote counted, the election commission said on Thursday the MPLA was ahead with a 51 percent majority while its longtime opponent, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA, had 44.5 percent.

“We have reached yet another outright majority. We have a calm majority to govern without any kind of problem and we will do it,” MPLA spokesman Rui Falcao told a news conference in the capital Luanda, a city that overwhelmingly voted for UNITA.

However, UNITA leader Costa Junior, addressing journalists and supporters for the first time since the vote, rejected what he called “brutal” discrepancies between the commission’s count and their own tally.

“There is not the slightest doubt that the MPLA did not win the elections,” he said. “UNITA does not recognize the provisional results.”

Junior called for an international commission to review the tally.

Wednesday’s vote was Angola’s most closely fought yet, with unprecedented gains for the opposition in parliamentary seats.