Angola’s fifth multiparty polls on 24 August are expected to be highly contested, with a stronger opposition and a weakened ruling party. But the country’s uneven political playing field and electoral manipulations threaten free and fair elections.
The ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and its candidate, current President João Lourenço, are up against the solid informal United Patriotic Front coalition. The grouping is led by a renewed National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), with its popular presidential candidate, Adalberto Costa Junior.
Other coalition members include two influential opposition groups leaders. One is Abel Chivukuvuku, a former senior UNITA member, founder of Convergência Ampla e Salvação de Angola – Coligação Eleitoral (CASA-CE) and leader of Partido para o Renascimento Angolano – Juntos por Angola. The other is Justino Pinto de Andrade from the Democratic Bloc Party. Some MPLA dissidents and civil society members have also joined the coalition. The other contenders are smaller and together usually garner less than 10% of the vote.
The first multiparty elections held in Angola in 1992 were a very close contest. The first round didn’t deliver a winner, as no candidate obtained the 50% +1 votes needed to be elected head of state. This set the scene for Angola’s bipartisan democracy. Still, it was the 10-year civil war that followed that shaped the country’s political configuration, with the dominant MPLA controlling the state and society.