LUANDA (Reuters) – The MPLA, Angola’s ruling party since independence in 1975, claimed victory in the presidential and legislative elections on Friday after being credited by the electoral commission with 51 percent of the votes cast in a marked ballot by low turnout and accusations of fraud.
The outgoing president, João Lourenço, thus seems assured of winning a second five-year term and having a majority in Parliament.
After counting more than 97% of the ballots, the electoral commission declared Thursday that the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), had won 51% of the votes against 44.5% for Unita (National Union for the independence of Angola), the opposition party led by Adalberto Costa Junior.
“We have once again gathered a clear majority. We have a quiet majority to govern without any problem and we will do it,” MPLA spokesman Rui Falcao told a press conference in Luanda. the capital.
Wednesday’s ballot was the tightest since the independence of the former Portuguese colony, and the opposition, despite significant progress, questioned the conditions of the count.
Fears of a violent protest had led the authorities to deploy some 80,000 police officers across the country, but the streets have so far remained generally calm.
Civil society activists shared images on social media of dozens of young people protesting voter fraud in the coastal town of Lobito on Friday, but Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the footage in the news. ‘immediate.
Unita should for the first time deprive the MPLA of the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to pass the most important reforms.
According to figures released by the electoral commission on Friday, the turnout was only 45.65%.
(Report Catarina Demony, with Sergio Goncalves in Lisbon, French version Marc Angrand, edited by Sophie Louet)