ANGOLA’S ruling party maintained its 47-year grip on power and secured a second mandate for President Joao Lourenco in the OPEC-member nation’s closest election in two decades.
The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, won 51.07% of the valid ballots cast in the August 24 vote, National Electoral Commission spokesman Lucas Quilundo told reporters Thursday in the capital, Luanda. The main opposition National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or Unita, got 44.05%.
The results were based on ballots counted from 97% of polling stations and the final count shouldn’t result in any significant changes, Quilundo said. Unita has questioned the transparency of the vote and has yet to concede defeat.
“We won with an outright majority and any party that wins with a majority can only be happy,” MPLA spokesman Rui Falcao said in a phone interview, as he urged Unita to concede it lost.
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