The Angolan government is going ahead with its plan to hold elections in 2006, the country’s first ballot since 1992, despite opposition party calls for the vote to be held next year.
A Cabinet meeting hosted by President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has ruled for 25 years, agreed on administrative measures to prepare for the general and presidential elections, a government communiqué issued late on Wednesday said.
A more-than-two-decade civil war, which began after independence from Portugal in 1975, devastated the south-west African country’s transport, telecommunications and administrative structures, making elections dependent on a huge rebuilding plan.
About four million people — about one-third of the population — were uprooted by the fighting and many lost their identity papers.
The war ended in April 2002, shortly after government forces killed Unita rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.
The communiqué said the government had set aside funds to draw up a new electoral roll and repair infrastructure. It provided no further details.
Dos Santos and his formerly Marxist party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, have ruled the oil-rich nation since independence.
Three peace deals — in 1975, 1991 and 1994 — collapsed before the government and Unita agreed to end the fighting.
Lawmakers in the National Assembly, or Parliament, were elected to a four-year term in 1992 and still sit.
Dos Santos beat Savimbi in the first round of a presidential election the same year but the rebel leader refused to accept defeat and returned to war before the second round could be held. — Sapa-AP