Angola goes to the polls on Wednesday (24) in a scenario full of symbolism: the fifth multiparty election in the country’s history takes place 20 years after the end of a civil war lasting nearly three decades and just over a month after the death of José Eduardo dos Santos, a controversial leader who spent 38 years in power.
In a country where the state is often confused with the ruling party —the MPLA has dominated local politics since independence in 1975—, the surprise for academics and civil society is the unprecedented articulation of the Angolan opposition.
The movement creates a window of opportunity for Angola to take democracy out of the fridge, even though social movements claim not to trust the smoothness of the electoral process, during which polls of voting intentions, for example, were banned — unofficial polls have very little credibility.
“Angola is a democratic transition that has been frozen in time”, says Jonuel Gonçalves, a researcher at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) and the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. “It’s not a totalitarian regime, but the party has the same power as the state, so the country doesn’t move forward or backward.”
Some 14.4 million people — half the country — are eligible to vote. At the polls, they will elect a new National Assembly, composed of 220 members. The president and vice president, as determined by a disputed amendment to the Constitution, made in 2010, will be, respectively, first and second in the list of the most voted party.
In a rare act, Unita, the biggest acronym of the opposition, saw its list of candidates become an umbrella for names that are not part of the party ranks, but make up the United Patriotic Front, a larger movement that seeks to finally remove the MPLA from the country’s government. African.
Gonçalves assesses that the party’s great challenge will be to win new votes instead of gathering support previously destined for smaller opposition parties, which could “pay the bill for Unita’s rise”. He weighs the fact that these will be the first elections in which the post-war generation will go to the polls — only those over 18 can vote.
For this slice, the main symbolic capital of the MPLA, that of having built Angola after the conflict —José Eduardo dos Santos was even nicknamed “the architect of peace”—has less weight. “For most people, war is a very distant image, especially since, in the final phase, the conflict was far from the big cities.”
Also at stake, of course, is the assessment of the government of João Lourenço (or JLo), political heir to Dos Santos, who was elected to the presidency in 2017. challenges that walked together after the oil boom in the 2000s.
In the first aspect, JLo advanced, “but with an inconsistent approach, keeping close to him figures with less than exemplary reputations”, says Marisa Lourenço, an analyst at the consultancy Control Risks for Southern Africa. As a successful example, she mentions reforms for more transparency in the diamond mining sector.
The Transparency International index that measures the perception of corruption in public administration showed Angola with 19 points when JLo took office. The figure has risen to 29 in the last year — the closer to zero, the worse. Angola is in the 136th position in a ranking of 180 nations; Brazil is the 96th.
In the economy, the advance was measured. More than 85% of exports still revolve around oil. The aggravating factor, says the analyst, is the fact that the government has never invested in refining capacity.
“This increases the cost of living because Angola is even more exposed to fuel prices as it is unable to meet its own domestic demand for the product.”
The coronavirus pandemic has worsened the scenario, and the future president will inherit a country with high levels of food insecurity and a GDP (US$ 72.5 billion) that represents half that of 2014.
“There is a new ethics in the country, but the situation of the population, which was already deteriorating with the recession, has not improved”, summarizes Gonçalves.
In decentralized campaigns, civil society groups such as the Movimento Cívico Mudei, which brings together several organizations, warn of the possibility of fraud in the counting of votes.
They criticize, for example, the revision of the electoral law, led by the MPLA, which removed the count from the municipalities, centralizing it at the national level. They fear that there will be less transparency as a result.
Professor Jonuel Gonçalves says he sees a low possibility of fraud after the vote. The problem, for him, is in the previous stage. “The government clearly uses the administrative machinery, so the opposition’s message doesn’t get as far as the government’s.”
Lourenço, from Control Risks, makes a similar analysis. “The police, the courts and the media are partial to the MPLA, which consistently weakens democratic institutions to stay in power.”
The alternation of power knocks on the door of Angola, an African country that shares a language with Brazil, chapters of history and a considerable migratory flow. But he still doesn’t know if he’ll have a chance to join.
