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Nine million voters in Africa’s second-largest oil producer are registered to vote in yesterday’s election which is likely to extend President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s grip on power despite a revitalised opposition.
Dos Santos, in power for 33 years, cast his ballot saying he was pleased with the conduct of the nation’s third polls since independence.
“I am satisfied because the process is going smoothly throughout the country,” he said after voting at a school in the capital Luanda’s government district near the presidential palace.
“I urge all Angolans to vote, to vote for democracy, which is important,” he said. “Today people have power in their hands, and it’s a great responsibility.”
Voting began at 7am with polls set to close 11 hours later.
Yesterday was declared a national holiday and the election commission has opened more than 10 000 polling stations.
Initial results are expected within a day, with final returns some time next week.
Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Phillips, reporting from Angola, said voter turnout in some places was high and in others low.
He said he had been to places where there was only a “trickle” of voters while others had “long queues and a lot of people participating”.
Angolans are casting their votes for parliamentarians, with the leader of the winning party becoming president.
Dos Santos has never faced a direct vote on his presidency. He won the first round of a presidential vote in 1992, held during a lull in the civil war. The run-off was aborted when fighting resumed.
In 2008 Angola held only parliamentary elections, with the presidential vote delayed and ultimately abolished under a new constitution that created a party list system.
The ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), in power since independence from Portugal in 1975, took more than 80 per cent of the vote and is expected to win comfortably again.
“It would be absolutely astonishing if the MPLA didn’t win a major victory,” said our correspondent.
For the main opposition Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which won only 10 per cent of the vote in 2008, the elections are a chance to prove that the former rebellion is still relevant to national politics.
Isaias Samakuva, the leader of UNITA, has already raised concerns about irregularities, mainly about the voters roll, in a campaign that has centred on calls for greater democracy and transparency in government.
Speaking on Thursday, Samakuva said: “Many Angolans’ names don’t appear on the voters roll, and in many places the voter roll has not been released.
“We have come to the conclusion that the National Electoral Commission is not ready.
“The conditions don’t exist to ensure the minimum of an organised, transparent process.”
Samakuva unsuccessfully sought to meet dos Santos to discuss his party’s long-held concerns about the electoral roll and the accreditation of 2 000 of its activists to monitor the balloting.
UNITA splintered earlier this year, with the charismatic Abel Chivukuvuku forming the Salvation-Electoral Coalition (CASA-CE) party in April, along with a top-level defector from the MPLA, smaller opposition groups and prominent members of civil society.
He has made inroads by actively courting the youth vote with promises of better jobs and housing, seeking to harness the frustrations of the youth in a country where more than half the population is under 18.
In the decade since Angola’s war ended, the oil-powered economy has become one of the fastest-growing in the world, showering the elite with fabulous riches while 55 per cent of the population live in abject poverty, according to UN data.
The elections come a day after police arrested several members of CASA-CE party after they tried to enter the national electoral commission (CNE) building to demand credentials to observe the vote at polling stations, a party official and police said.
William Tonet, a candidate for CASA-CE, told the Reuters news agency that police guarding the CNE in Luanda fired shots to keep back dozens of young party members who approached the building.
About a dozen party members were taken away by police, Tonet said.
A police officer at the Quarta Esquadra police station near the electoral commission told Reuters that several CASA-CE members were arrested but he could not confirm shots were fired.
No one was hurt in the incident, which followed a month of generally peaceful campaigning, said Tonet. — Al Jazeera.
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