About 8,3-million Angolans will go the polls on Friday in the first election since independence in 1975 to be held under peaceful conditions.
They will elect 220 National Assembly deputies from 5 198 candidates, fielded by 10 parties and four political coalitions.
In contrast to the previous election held 16 years ago, the presidential vote will not be held at the same time, removing much of the political sting that could potentially undo the six years of uninterrupted peace enjoyed since 2002 — the first such period since the liberation war broke out in 1962.
According to the National Electoral Commission (Commissao Nacional Eleitoral, or CNE), only 14 out of 138 political parties registered since 1991 could satisfy the Constitutional Tribunal’s requirements as set out by the 1997 Law on Political Parties.
The law, amended in 2004, prohibits — among others — parties of purely regional or local character; tribalism, regionalism and any forms of discrimination; and the use of violence to overthrow multiparty democracy, or possessing any paramilitary forces.
The law further requires supporting signatures from at least 7 500 registered voters (of which no fewer than 150 have to come from each region). Also, parties must have their national headquarters in the capital, Luanda.
This places smaller parties at a huge disadvantage to the ruling MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola), whose deep pockets and traditional political base in Luanda — home to one-third of Angola’s estimated 15-million people — give it a huge tactical advantage.
The economics of Luanda, which is prohibitively expensive and over-crowded, force smaller parties to spend huge amounts on rent that otherwise could have been used to mobilise their supporters.
Although those rejected by a recent ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal included some smaller parties that had representatives in Parliament, most were ”ad hoc, vote-for-me” organisations that had little or no real structural back-up, according to a recently released study by Inge Amundsen and Markus Wiener of the Norwegian Chr Michelson Institute.
President’s powers
A Communist-oriented, one-party state until the constitutional reforms of 1991, Angola’s politics, however, continue to be dominated by a presidential system that remains extreme even by African standards.
President José Eduardo dos Santos, as head of state, the government, commander-in-chief and president of the MPLA, appoints the prime minister and all line ministers, and cannot be removed by a vote of no confidence in Parliament.
Angolan officials argue that the country is only semi-presidential because of the prime minister’s position (often left vacant over the past years), but Dos Santos retains the right to dissolve Parliament. His office is also largely responsible for all new legislation, and draws up the state budget, which includes allocations to Parliament.
Although presidential elections are to be held next year, Dos Santos is yet to give any indications of a date — or whether he intends to stand again. Under current rules, he could stand again and extend his 28-year occupation of Angola’s most powerful office by another 12 years.
”The president’s power of dissolution is neither relative nor restricted,” remarked Amundsen et al, a fact exacerbated by the MPLA’s dominance of Parliament where it has held an absolute majority of 129 out of 220 seats since 1992.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch last week slammed the election process thus far as neither free nor fair, with opposition parties starved of essential funding, their supporters intimidated by ruling-party officials and denied access to state-run media.
”The conditions for free and fair elections start long before election day. […] It’s clear Angolans aren’t able to campaign free from intimidation or pressure. And unless things change now, Angolans won’t be able to cast their votes freely,” said Human Rights Watch director Georgette Gagnon.
Be that as it may, the smaller parties hope to use the upcoming elections to start reining in the president’s powers. Of the 10 parties and four coalitions that made the cut, the three oldest ones — the MPLA, FNLA and Unita — are expected to dominate the eventual outcome.
Opposition
Unita’s support among the Ovimbundu people of the central highlands is expected to help it gain a stronger foothold in Parliament. The FNLA, although split between two factions, for its part has strong support in the northern provinces of Uije and Mbanza Congo, from where its leader, Holden Roberto — a contemporary of Dos Santos and the late Jonas Savimbi — originally hails.
Some of the smaller parties, such as the FpD (Frente para a Democracia) and PRS (Partido de Renovacao Social), untainted by the country’s history of political violence, try to present themselves to voters as a ”third way”. But they face an uphill battle, not least because of a lack of cash (the government is yet to disburse statutory funding) and alleged political meddling by the MPLA in their parties’ affairs.
The meddling comes in the form of offers of houses, cars and cushy jobs in a government flush with oil revenues expected to top $20-billion by 2010 — and bags of cash. ”Many of them have sold out, they just want a bit of bom vida [good life] and are just going through the motions,” shrugged a Western diplomat.
Temptations of the bom vida have seen leadership splits within many of the smaller parties, most notably in the FNLA. Unita, while having compromised by becoming part of the now-dissolved government of national reconciliation, angrily rejected suggestions that its leader, Isaias Samakuva, had also compromised by the MPLA’s petro-dollars.
In contrast to the United Nations-run elections of 1992, the current atmosphere couldn’t be more different. Then, a glowering Unita leader Jonas Savimbi rejected the presidential results and plunged his country back into 10 more years of civil war that only ended with his being hunted down and shot dead in remote Moxico province in April 2002.
Between 1992 and 2002, wearing a Unita T-shirt anywhere in Luanda was as good as a death sentence: in the aftermath of Savimbi’s return to war, revenge attacks saw thousands of people massacred, often by their neighbours with less-than-honourable ideals, according to a report by the local Catholic Church.
The National Electoral Commission has been at pains to stress the reconciliatory process in nightly television broadcasts that emphasise the right to different political opinions.
Colours to the mast
While only the MPLA’s colours are seen in the inner city of Luanda, the colours of Unita — and to a lesser extent, the FpD and PRS — are more visible in the outlying, teeming poor bairros.
Apart from small posters occasionally spotted on telephone poles around Luanda, the other smaller parties are all but invisible, and the campaign appears to be shaping into a two-and-a-half-horse political race for the National Assembly’s seats.
Massive red, black and yellow MPLA flags have been hoisted everywhere with the help of motorised cranes. In response, Unita activists have shimmied up poles to hang their own flags next to those of the MPLA wherever they can.
Nowhere is this rivalry more obvious than in the suburb of Bairro Samba, where Unita has opened an office in clear view of Dos Santos’s luxurious palace overlooking the bay and the brand-new, Brazilian-built highway from a nearby hilltop.
On Sunday, MPLA activists — clearly irritated by this affront — organised a party on a traffic island opposite the Unita office, tempting their hungrier opponents with offers of beer, meat and political conversion in clear violation of a political code of conduct that requires parties to avoid direct confrontation.
A hovering police officer, asked about the party (which amounted to a traffic obstruction), gave a surly look when questioned about the MPLA’s adherence to rules. ”What do you want, you want me to close the Unita office?” he barked.
Nearby, a man in his 40s who identified himself only as Bruno smiled when asked about the brand-new MPLA T-shirt and cap he was wearing. ”Angolans have gotten a lot smarter, they have access to the internet and other media these days and can make up their minds for themselves,” he said.
”I eat their meat but only I know what is in my heart,” he smiled enigmatically.